Bruce Robinson
The Indolence of Blessings
Everywhere is war
—Bob Marley
We felt blessed, and wrote
no poems, no odes nor anthems,
no paeans no praise, no epithalamiums,
no hymns or hosannas,
well, here and there an alleluia,
for then was a time when iambs could be counted,
and even counted on, and our continents
seemed to make some kind of sense.
It’s not that I’m asking for a coda,
hold on now, think about it now,
the sullen détente of power, the jealous
light, the clustered delusion of stars
But now a threnody seems lazy.
Now we’ve got work to do.
Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Pangyrus, Spectrum, The Menteur, Common Ground, Connecticut River Review, and The Maynard. He lives in Brooklyn.
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