Commonplacing
Friends, the week has been a heavy one, and it feels like the only thing I can share is poetry—one of the first poems in my head as I witnessed what is happening to Gaza right now, in the aftermath of tragedy in Israel.
Why Is This Age Worse...? Why is this age worse than earlier ages? In a stupor of grief and dread have we not fingered the foulest wounds and left them unhealed by our hands? In the west the falling light still glows, and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun, but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses, and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in. --Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz (with Max Hayward)
Holding space for love to all, recognizing that every life has a right to not suffer, and to live in peace—despite a world that would insist otherwise.
This poem speaks so much of the present situation of the world in such succinct ways. What can a poet do but lament in words for a crumbling world! And yet to speak of hope and healing is still a part of poet’s job.
Thank you for reminding us Freya! I needed this today.
I was introduced to Akhmatova by the poet Carolyn Forche, who edited the amazing collection “Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness.” She also taught me an amazing, haunting line from Neruda who was so known for beautiful metaphors but decided there was one image so awful he wouldn’t try to compare it to something else “and the blood of children ran in the streets/without fuss, like the blood of children”