Juju love

Account by Czeslaw Milosz

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. 

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness, 

Like the flight of a moth which, had it known, 

Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame. 

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety, 

The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored. 

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride, 

The time when I was among their adherents 

Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting. 

But all of them would have one subject, desire, 

If only my own—but no, not at all; alas, 

I was driven because I wanted to be like others. 

I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me. 

The history of my stupidity will not be written. 

For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious. 

Relief by Kay Ryan

We know it is close

to something lofty.

Simply getting over being sick

or finding lost property

has in it the leap,

the purge, the quick humility

of witnessing a birth—

how love seeps up

and retakes the earth.

There is a dreamy

wading feeling to your walk

inside the current

of restored riches,

clocks set back,

disasters averted.

Steeple by Carl Phillips

Maybe love really does mean the submission of power—
I don’t know. Like pears on a branch, a shaking branch, 
in sunlight, 4 o’clock sunlight, all the ways we do harm, 
or refrain from it, when nothing says we have to.... Shining, 
everyone shining like that, as if reality itself depended 
on a nakedness as naked as naked gets; on a faith in each 
other as mistaken as mistaken tends to be, though I have 
loved the mistake of it—still do; even now—as I love
the sluggishness with which, like ceremony or, not much 
different, any man who, having seen himself at last, 
turns at first away—has to—the folded black and copper 
wings of history begin their deep unfolding, the bird itself, 
shuddering, lifts up into the half-wind that comes after—
higher—soon desire will resemble most that smaller thing, 
late affection, then the memory of it; and then nothing at all.