Poem of the Day: Meditation on the Sources of the Catastrophic Imagination

1 / 21 / 2015

Poem of the Day: Meditation on the Sources of the Catastrophic Imagination BY LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO Green as alchemy and even more scarce, little can be known Of the misfortunes of a saint condemned to turn great sorrows Into greater egrets, ice-bound and irrevocable. The wings were left ajar At the altar where I've knelt all night, trembling, leaning, rough As sugar raw, and sweet. From the outside, peering in, it would seem My life had been smooth as a Prussian ship gliding on the bridegroom Of her Baltic waters in a season of no wind. Tinny empire, Neighborhood of Bokhara silks, were you to go, I would stop—simply                                 As a pilgrim putting down his cup. Most of my life, I had consorted with the unspeakable, longing to put my mouth On it. I was just imagining. I can be Resumed. Some nights, I paint into the scene two Doves, I being alternately one and then the other, calling myself by my kind.                                                   In the living will if it says: Hydrate. Please. Hydration only. Do not resume me then. Lucie Brock-Broido, "Meditation on the Sources of the Catastrophic Imagination" from Stay, Illusion. Copyright © 2013 by Lucie Brock-Broido.  Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Published with arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. Source: Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO Biography  More poems by this author