POEM
Messengers
You have only to wait, they will find you.
The geese flying low over the marsh,
glittering in black water.
They find you.
And the deer—
how beautiful they are,
as though their bodies did not impede them.
Slowly they drift into the open
through bronze panels of sunlight.
Why would they stand so still
if they were not waiting?
Almost motionless, until their cages rust,
the shrubs shiver in the wind,
squat and leafless.
You have only to let it happen:
that cry—release,release—like the moon
wrenched out of earth and rising
full in its circle of arrows
until they come before you
like dead things, saddled with flesh,
and you above them, wounded and dominant.
"Messengers" by Louise Glück, from The First Four Books of Poems. Copyright © 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1995 by Louise Glück. Used by the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, www.harpercollins.com.
Source: The First Four Books of Poems (The Ecco Press, 1995)
Pulitzer-Prize-winner Louise Glück (1943-) grew up on Long Island and attended Sarah Lawrence . . . MORE »
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