POEM
The Obligation to Be Happy
Linda PastanIt is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.
Linda Pastan, “The Obligation to Be Happy” from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998. Copyright © 1998 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Source: Poetry (December 1996).
This poem originally appeared in the December 1996 issue of Poetry.
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PASTAN, Linda (1932– ), was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in . . . MORE »
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