In those years, people will say, we lost trackof the meaning of we, of youwe found ourselvesreduced to Iand the whole thing becamesilly, ironic, terrible:we were trying to live a personal lifeand yes, that was the only lifewe could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plungedinto our personal weatherThey were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drovealong the shore, through the rags of fogwhere we stood, saying I

The faithful drudging child the child at the oak desk whose penmanship,hard work, style will win her prizesbecomes the woman with a mission, not to win prizes but to change the laws of history.

Whereever a poet is born enduringdepends on the frailest of chances: Who listened to your murmuring over your little rubbish who let you bewho gave you the books who let you know you were not alone

Reading and writing aren't sacred yet people have been killed as if they were

The family coil so twisted, tight and loose anyone trying to leave has to strafe the field burn the premises down

You ask me how I'm going to live the rest of my life Well, nothing is predictable with pain Did the old poets write of this? —in its odd spaces, free, many have sung and battled—But I'm already living the rest of my life not under conditions of my choosingwired into pain rider on the slow train

I refuse to become a seeker for cures.Everything that has ever helped me has come through what alreadylay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong across my heart. This is from wheremy strength comes, even when I miss my strengtheven when it turns on melike a violent master.

My country wedged fast in historystuck in the ice

It's true, these last few years I've lived watching myself in the act of loss—the art of losing, Elizabeth Bishop called it, but for me no art only badly-done exercises acts of the heart forced to question its presumptions in this world its mere excitements acts of the body forced to measure all instincts against pain acts of parting trying to let go without giving up yes Elizabeth a city here a village there a sister, comrade, cat and more no art to this but anger