On Pain 

Kahlil Gibran 

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.
     And he said:
     Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
     Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
     And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
     And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

     Much of your pain is self-chosen.
     It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
     Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
     And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

The Ghazal of What Hurt

Peter Cole

Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars.

But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are

walking easily across the ground, and into town

as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,

or riding a wave of what feels like the world’s good will—

though helped along by something foreign and older than you are

and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable

an X-ray, you’re sure, would show it, within the body you are,

not all that far beneath the skin, and even in

some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are—

with all that isn’t actually you having flowed

through and settled in you, and made you what you are?

The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased.

It’s memory now—so you know just how lucky you are.

You didn’t always. Were you then? And where’s the fear?

Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!

Face it, friend, you most exist when you’re driven

away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.

Self-Improvement

Tony Hoagland

Just before she flew off like a swan

to her wealthy parents’ summer home,

Bruce’s college girlfriend asked him

to improve his expertise at oral sex,

and offered him some technical advice:

Use nothing but his tonguetip

to flick the light switch in his room

on and off a hundred times a day

until he grew fluent at the nuances

of force and latitude.

Imagine him at practice every evening,

more inspired than he ever was at algebra,

beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,

thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,

seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind’s eye,

the quadratic equation of her climax

yield to the logic

of his simple math.

Maybe he unscrewed

the bulb from his apartment ceiling

so that passersby would not believe

a giant firefly was pulsing

its electric abdomen in 13 B.

Maybe, as he stood

two inches from the wall,

in darkness, fogging the old plaster

with his breath, he visualized the future

as a mansion standing on the shore

that he was rowing to

with his tongue’s exhausted oar.

Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:

met someone, apres-ski, who,

using nothing but his nose

could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.

Sometimes we are asked

to get good at something we have

no talent for,

or we excel at something we will never

have the opportunity to prove.

Often we ask ourselves

to make absolute sense

out of what just happens,

and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,

which everybody practices,

but strangely few of us

grow graceful in.

The climaxes of suffering are complex,

costly, beautiful, but secret.

Bruce never played the light switch again.

So the avenues we walk down,

full of bodies wearing faces,

are full of hidden talent:

enough to make pianos moan,

sidewalks split,

streetlights deliriously flicker.

This World

Czeslaw Milosz

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.

What was only a trial run was taken seriously.

The rivers will return to their beginnings.

The wind will cease in its turning about.

Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.

Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror–

They are children again.

The dead will wake up, not comprehending.

Till everything that happened has unhappened.

What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much. 

Faith

Czeslaw Milosz

The word Faith means when someone sees

A dew-drop or a floating leaf, and knows

That they are, because they have to be.

And even if you dreamed, or closed your eyes

And wished, the world would still be what it was,

And the leaf would still be carried down the river.

It means that when someone’s foot is hurt

By a sharp rock, he also knows that rocks

Are here so they can hurt our feet.

Look, see the long shadow cast by the trees;

And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

In Black Despair

Czeslaw Milosz

In grayish doubt and black despair,

I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,

pretending to joy, although I lacked it.

The age had made lament redundant.

So here’s the question — who can answer it —

Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?

[The will to see 

oneself as fragile]

The will to see oneself as 

fragile, fallible, 

liable to fail. 



To consider a stranger and 

hear, in the mind’s ear, 

one’s true voice



insisting: I must change.

Ordinary people do this

Patient urgent work



alone and together

day upon day upon day.

Like my mother, once,



leading her ailing mother 

back through the maze 

of our suburban scrawl,



past ache, past haze, 

past confusion and rage

toward a neat room



where waited prayer,

fear, forgiveness, 

grief, grace. This



is a poem about kin 

and neighbors and nations 

adrift, in error, under siege.



This is a ceasefire poem. 

Tracy K. Smith

Dog Star

Take today. I want there
            to be less
of everything—wind

& worry, of leaves
            littering the ground
& love letters, addressee

unknown. Return
            to sender—
this, my quarrel

with what
            must be
told. No,

I insist, No.

Yet the wind won’t
            go away 
so easily, the stars remain

& do not grey—
            the boy looking
up into them thinks

he’s seeing them first
            tonight—it’s true,
here the sky & moon

do meet
            in an overgrown field—
nothing here 

tall enough to pretend
            to reach—even him
amazed at the blue,

even you.

Kevin Young

I.AM. NOT.A.MODEL.MINORITY

I come from family of  over-achievers…