I’ve posted this poem before, but it seemed apropos for today, too  🙂

If they come in the night

by Marge Piercy

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, Why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a hard cold floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me only
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted grey light off the waters of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of the morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculps from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

The SuperBowl halftime show brought back so many memories. And what a thrill that it ended with my favorite Madonna song (and how fun to sing along)…

PS: I want to be one of Madonna’s biceps when I grow up…

We write to heighten our own awareness of life.

We write to lure and enchant and console others.

We write to serenade our lovers.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal.

We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.

We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.

We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely.

We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color.

It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

February 1954, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5

Love the message of the song below–I’ve had so many of those long dark nights myself…

On a not-so-related note: ran into an old friend at the gym tonite–someone that I hadn’t seen since I started grad school. She said I looked radiant and happy (more so that when she knew me before). That that make it a bit easier to reply when she asked a few moments later about how “John was doing these days.” Oy. That’s happened twice this past week–I never do know quite how to reply to such questions. Any advice?

Lately I’ve been thinking about my priorities and goals and focus (or occasional lack thereof of all three things).  This poem resonated with me on many levels because of that, and because of the ever-present gnawing insecurity that I’m just not good enough or committed enough to see my projects through to completion.

An excerpt from “For the young who want to” by Marge Piercy (and, by that way, I want to add that her book Circles on the Water is worth every penny–her poetry is thought-provoking and substantial):

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting[…]

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
boy else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re a certified dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better then being loved.

Was so hungry for poetry today, that I ate two books of it for lunch (along with some very tasty steak that was just barely pink in the middle and so-juicy and a strong cup of coffee).

If they come in the night

by Marge Piercy

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, Why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a hard cold floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me only
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted grey light off the waters of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of the morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculps from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

This song came on in the cafe where I was eating lunch last week, and I absolutely could not help but sing along. Millions of peaches, peaches for me…(plus, there are ninjas, and what could be better than that?)