You Newly Born

               To Zakai, two weeks old

 

You newly born to a world at the tipping point
that tilts between dismay and sheer despair—
what can I advise or warn or urge?
For I have grown unaccustomed to the world,
which has no use for the little I have to give—
some artful webs of words, poems to tease
the moment, but with no power to shake the state,
to help your vast, dazzling plans.
                                                 Oh yes,
you will surely clench your fist and cry such cries
and plan the old-new plans we have seen before,
to cure those wounds, those dark shocks you will feel,
those keen, those incomprehensible griefs of earth.

But look! I wander again in my thickets of night
as though bereft of dawn and sun. But woods
live only from the sun, the day’s ascent,
and I have my dawns as well, so I give you this:

Open your fist, even in the darkest swamp;
in all weathers, let those weathers touch
your open palms. All the weathers are life,
all are laughter. All are tears. Come grief,
come joy.
           Come night, come dawn.
                                            Come earth, come love.