By Maria Popova
I used to be a latecomer to poetry — an artwork type I didn’t perceive and, as we are inclined to do with what we don’t perceive, discounted. However beneath its gradual seduction, I got here to see the way it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable areas of being the place the truest truths dwell, essentially the most tough and essentially the most lovely; the way it sneaks in by means of the backdoor of consciousness to disclose us extra absolutely to ourselves; the way it offers us an instrument for paying consideration, which is how we be taught to like the world extra.
Once I first started writing poetry, it was privately, almost secretly, definitely shyly. However I’ve come to see that whereas poetry could also be a language for the silent locations in us, it is usually a language of connection — a method of discovering the intimate within the common and the common within the intimate — and so it’s meant to be shared.
In that spirit, and with immense gratitude to my poetry lecturers — Marie Howe and Ellen Bass — here’s a poem.
SPELL AGAINST INDIFFERENCE
by Maria PopovaThe rain falls and falls
cool, bottomless, and prehistoric
falls like night time —
not an ablution
not a baptism
only a small motive
to recollect
all we all know of Heaven
to recollect
we’re nonetheless right here
with our songs and our wars,
our area telescopes and our desk tennis.Right here too
within the moist grass
half a shell
of a robin’s egg
shimmers
blue as a new child star
fragile as a world.
