Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming by Thomas Lux

February 11, 2015   Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming   Thomas Lux

It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches and saloons are filled with decent humans. A mother wants to feed her daughter, fathers to buy their children things that break. People laugh, all over the world, people laugh. We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad; we dislike injustice and cancer, and are not unaware of our terrible errors. A man wants to love his wife. His wife wants him to carry something. We’re capable of empathy, and intense moments of joy. Sure, some of us are venal, but not most. There’s always a punchbowl, somewhere, in which floats a… Life’s a bullet, that fast, and the sweeter for it. It’s the same everywhere: Slovenia, India, Pakistan, Suriname—people like to pray, or they don’t, or they like to fill a blue plastic pool in the back yard with a hose and watch their children splash. Or sit in cafes, or at table with family. And if a long train of cattle cars passes along West Ridge it’s only the cattle from East Ridge going to the abattoir. The unbroken world is coming, (it must be coming!), I heard a choir, there were clouds, there was dust, I heard it in the streets, I heard it announced by loudhailers mounted on trucks.            Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Lux. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming’ is a poem that’s trying hard to be optimistic, affirmative. I hope it achieves those conditions at times. However, those loudhailers mounted on trucks at the end of the poem make me a little nervous.” —Thomas Lux   Thomas Lux is the author of Selected Poems 1982-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2014). He teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo Credit: Jennifer Holley Lux Most Recent Book by Lux   Selected Poems 1982-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2014) "I Have News for You" by Tony Hoagland "A Song On the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz "You Can’t Have It All" by Barbara Ras Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.     © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038