Baudelaire
The headlines and feature stories alike
leak blood all over the breakfast table,
the wounding of the world mingling
with smells of bacon and bread.
Small pains are merely anterooms for larger,
and every shadow has a brother, just waiting.
Every grace is sullied by ancient angers.
I must remember it has always been like this:
those Trojan women, learning their fates;
the simple sharpness of the guillotine.
A filigree of cruelty adorns every culture.
I've thumbed through the pages of my life,
longing for childhood whose failures
were merely personal, for all
the stations of love I passed through.
I am like the queen of a rainy country,
powerless and grown old. Another morning
with its quaint obligations: newspaper,
bacon grease, rattle of dish and bones.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Linda Pastan, 2004
