A Poem
Miracle Ice Cream
by Adrienne Rich
Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.
Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.
Find a poem that speaks to you this week. And Shabbat Shalom.
4 Comments:
Thank you. It is lovely.
Every year on the last day of class, I give my students the following, from Act IV of The Tempest:
If I have too austerely punish'd you,
Your compensation makes amends, for I
Have given you here a third of mine own life,
Or that for which I live; [which] once again
I tender to thy hand: all thy vexations
Were but my trials of thy love and thou
Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore Heaven,
I ratify this, my rich gift.
It always speaks to me at this time of year because I like to think that I give something of myself to my students, rather than merely teach them.
This one's been rattling around in my brain this week:
The Song of the Audience - Neil Gaiman
Let us call now for the makers of strong images,
Let them come to us now carrying their quills and sharp razors
Let them gash their arms for ink and let them limn.
Look at them tracing their desperation, the makers of strong images
Look at their ink clotting brown and black on the parchment skin
Look: they render us down there limb from limb.
Like dreamers they will reduce us in the rendering,
Like ash and fat and soap we are reduced to our essentials
(Like a shadow who stares at us with eyes of flesh).
Let them entertain us, the makers of strong images.
Let us toss them copper pennies. But let us not forget.
They make the images. We give them flesh.
They circle as packs of wolves
Or ambulances on this wet night
Invisible, immune to the threats that plague
And so out in this gloom, beyond the ice and dark and fog
Lies some haven protected by light
And visible from far
A harbour, sanctuary
From all your fears and woes
Made right only by this bed, this heart
This winter, she froze
This spring, he rose
Waiting still, hopeless, but hoping for a
Miracle.
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