Poems that you love

[rayheinrich]

                       
                                    A Rainy Country
                                                                - Linda Pastan
                       
                        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.
                        Even grace is sullied by ancient angers.
                        I must remember it is always been like this:
                       
                        those Trojan women, learning their fates;
                        the simple shortness of the good 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.
                        Shadows in the shadow of shadows.
                       
                        I am like the queen of a rainy country,
                        powerless and grown old. Another morning
                        with its quaint obligations: newspaper,
                        bacon grease, rattling dishes and bones.
                       
                                            - - -