After a loss you live
with your gasp, your gaze,
with your hungry mouth as you lift the fork.
Something Sane. Open the door.
A guest sits down at the kitchen table.
Washing evening dishes:
something simple, something sane.
Water dreams over your wrist,
your hand, a round
transparent dish.
Something Simple. Night, rusty fire escape.
Even the rain: sane.
Urgent street voices; screech
of a hinge. Simple. A clanking
bang,
somebody is closing a gate
or opening one.
From “Morning Prayer” (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005)
Eve Grubin is poet-in-residence at the London School of Jewish Studies and teaches at New York University in London.
