Skip to content

I left the protection

of my plan & my

thinking. I let my self

go. Is this hope I

 

thought. Light fled.

We have a world

to lose I thought.

Summer fled. The

 

waters rose. How

do I organize

myself now. How do I

find sufficient

 

ignorance. How do I

 

not summarize

anything. Is this mystery,

this deceptively complex

lack of design. No sum

 

towards which to strive. No

general truth. None.

How do I go without

accuracy. How do I

 

go without industry.

No north or

south. What shall I

disrupt. How find

 

the narrowness. The

rare ineffable

narrowness. Far below

numbers. Through and behind

 

alphabets and their hiving, swarming – here,

these letters. I

lean forward

looking for the anecdote

 

which leads me closer to

 

the nothing. I do not

 

lack ideas. I do not

fail to see

how pieces

fall together. I do

 

not fail to be

a human companion

to the human. I am

not skeptical. I

 

am seeking to enter the in-

conspicuous. Where the stems

of the willows

bend when I

 

step. There is dream in

them I think. There is

desire. From this height

above the ground I see

 

too much. I need

to get down, need to

get out of the reach

of the horizon. Are

 

these tracks from this

summer or how many years

ago. Are these

grasses come again now,

 

new. This is being

remembered. Even as it

erases itself it does not

erase the thing

 

it was. And gave you.

 

No one can tell the whole story. 

On the Last Day

Jorie Graham

More from
Poem of the Week

Robert Majzels and Erín Moure

Soft Link 3

translated from the French written by
Nicole Brossard
Victoria Chang

Grief