For They Shall Inherit
It’s Friday and so we’ll end the week with a pair of poems. Good Bones by Maggie Smith:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Those are just excerpts…click through to read the whole poems. I’ll see you next week.
Comments 4
Was browsing thediagram.com right before I read this and still had this tab open: "I WANT TO WRITE A POEM FOR THE CHILDREN WHO HELP THEIR PARENTS PASS THE UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP TEST" by Chelsy Diaz Amaya: https://thediagram.com/24_4/amaya.html
Oh wow, thanks so much for sharing this.
Beautiful, and also ouch. I needed an additional poem on our complicated relationship with hope: The Layers by Stanley Kunitz
Jesus I love Stanley Kunitz. "How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses?"
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