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Funny Strange

By Jennifer Michael Hecht b. 1965

We are tender and our lives are sweet

and they are already over and we are

visiting them in some kind of endless

reprieve from oblivion, we are walking

around in them and after we shatter

with love for everything we settle in.

Thou tiger on television chowing,

thou very fact of dreams, thou majestical

roof fretted with golden fire. Thou wisdom

of the inner parts. Thou tintinnabulation.

Is it not sweet to hand over the ocean's

harvest in a single wave of fish? To bounce

a vineyard of grapes from one's apron

and into the mouth of the crowd? To scoop up

bread and offer up one's armful to the throng?

Let us live as if we were still among

the living, let our days be patterned after

theirs. Is it not marvelous to be forgetful?

Source: Poetry (October 2003).

Biography

Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht earned a BA in history from Adelphi University and a PhD in the history of science from Columbia University. Her collections of poetry include the highly praised The Next Ancient World (2001)—which won the Tupelo Press Judge’s Prize in Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and ForeWord Review’s Poetry Book of the Year Award—and Funny (2005), winner of the . . .

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