Since the election, I wake up every morning in dread.
Poem
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less
insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their
careless stories,
The news would pour out of various
devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products
to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for
similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and
unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those
men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast
distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of
almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of
night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find
each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to
reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each
other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by
any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach
beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.
Muriel Rukeyser
from The Speed of Darkness, 1968
posted on Poetry Foundation
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