4.18.2009

This is Just to Say

It's a beautiful spring day, so I went for an hour long walk in a nearby nature park this morning. I also brought along my ipod and listened to last week's episode of This American Life, which was actually a repeat. At the end, they had a segment about this famous poem by William Carlos Williams:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were
probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so
sweet
and so cold



As they pointed out on the show, "It’s about, among other things, causing a loved one inconvenience and offering a non-apologizing apology." This American Life then invited several regular contributors to read poems inspired by this one. There were two which I thought I'd share. The first is by Jonatahn Godstein:
This is just to say
I have eaten the Fruit of Knowledge
but nothing happened

not a word
no lightning or volcanoes
not even a drop of rain

So I was just wondering
Are you there?


And then this one by Shalom Auslander:
He was a troublemaker, okay
And didn’t know when
To shut up

Still
We never would have killed him
If we’d known he was the Lord

This is just to say ... I don't know why I'm sharing those two with you all, other than that I love poetry that engages with the God questions. Plus, I think God has an excellent sense of humor!

2 comments:

Eliza said...

There was a book that I read years ago... I don't remember the name of it. But the characters kept meeting higher and higher forms of life until they reached a small group of beings who were recording the rest of the life in a universe in a sort of graduate level course in biological formations. When one of the characters realized the pattern, they asked these beings if there was a 'level' above them.

"We do not know, we can only suspect." They said, "But we know one thing, what ever it is, it must have a well developed sense of humor."

I just loved that thought...

Mark Mossa, SJ said...

I love Williams' poem; and what a great idea to write poems inspired by it!

I also love "So much depends on a red wheelbarrow . . .