The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born - Njideka Akunyili Crosby
How to read a tome of Collected Poems?
Read one that pivotally changes you
and lose track of the page and title.
How to clean a house? Lose your ring in it.
Milosz not having to make peace one day
because the people are dead, nor revisit
some cities of his blood, because they are
razed. I’m still reading for that one.
If I wince that I got cuppy, said too much,
maybe years ago, sometimes the sudden
knowledge that my auditor is no longer
will come in as wistful relief, if with grief.
So I’d like to find it. This “how” isn’t
an engineering question, but angle,
here alchemically
translated to hope by way of loss.
***
Grief is a savage sister to Gratitude. The last few years have been lessons in loss. Loss of all kinds. I won't go into it, that's what poetry is for, to show rather than tell. What I will say is that I am grateful to be on this side of it.
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