It was everywhere, in the
streets and houses,
on farms and now in the air itself.
It had come from history and
we were history
so it had come from us.
I told my artist friends who
courted it
not to suffer
on purpose, not to fall in
love
with sadness
because it would naturally be
theirs
without assistance,
I had sad stories of my own,
but they made me quiet
the way my parents’ failures
once did,
nobody’s business
but our own, and, besides,
what was left to say
these days
when the unspeakable was out
there being spoken,
exhausting all sympathy?
Yet, feeling it, how
difficult to keep
the face’s curtains
closed - she left, he left,
they died -
the heart rising
into the mouth and eyes,
everything so basic,
so unhistorical
at such times. And then, too,
the woes
of others would get in,
but mostly I was inured and
out
to make a decent buck
or in pursuit of some
slippery pleasure
that was sadness disguised.
I found it, it found me, oh
my artist friends
give it up, just mix your
paints,
stroke,
the strokes unmistakably will
be yours.
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