Monday, July 19, 2021

Julia Alvarez - Are We All Ill With Acute Loniness


Poem of the Day


"ARE WE ALL ILL WITH ACUTE LONELINESS"


Are we all ill with acute loneliness,

chronic patients trying to recover

the will to love? Yet all we've suffered

from others and ourselves, all the losses

of faith in the human face - when we glimpsed

the animal in the mother's grimace

or in the lover's grin as he promised

the promise no one can keep - made us lapse

back into our separateness. We all feel

absence like a wound. Sometimes the love

of another wounded one acts like a salve

which soothes the dying self but cannot heal

our lives. And perhaps this is what it feels

like to be human, and we are all well?


Julia Alvarez (1950-)


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