Magdalena Zurawski
IT’S HARD TO BE A SAINT
I was sympathetic to language
but often it shrugged me
and kept other lovers. I
crawled through the commas of
Romanticism and rejected the rhythms
though sometimes at night I
could feel a little sad.
I could emerge now into
a new kind of style but
the market is already flooded
and my people have lost
faith in things meant to
land a clear yes or
no. It’s good to welcome
a stranger into the house.
Introduce her to everyone sitting
at the table and wash
your hands before you serve
her lest the residue of
other meals affect your affections.
‘If something is beautiful we do
not even experience pain as
pain.’ (A man said that.)
I think I owe all
words to my friends. ‘We
speak to one another in
circles with ourselves.’ (He said
that too.) That’s why we
go to war. We’ve gotten
too big to be friends
with everyone and so I
like to feel the fellowship
of the person next to
me shooting out across a
foreign plain. The degrees of
light on the horizon are
something I share with him
and this is also a
feeling of love. I spoke
to his widow and touched
his dog. I told his daughter
how his last breath was
Homeric and spoke of nothing
but returning home.