Like a Poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy, to hang out
and prophesy.
from Responsibility, a poem by Grace Paley
Maybe you have to be lazy
like a poet,
to decant the story of life
Lazy like a cat stretching.
Lazy like a meandering stream..
Lazy like a child's giggle. Lazy like sun sparkles on pond water. Lazy enough to stop and wonder, look and listen.
Lazy like a poet, decanting the story of life, life hanging out and prophesying.
Prophesying about the people the people who believe in absurdities. About atrocities born of absurdities.
Prophesying about habits and prejudices
disguised
as values and traditions..
Prophesying like a poet. Decanting the story of life.
Freedom with both fear and bravery.
--Sylvia Dodge 10/20/25
I've tried dozens if not hundreds of times to post this fine poem by Sylvia Dodge exactly as she wrote it, with her lines spaced simply, no indentions, all beginning on the left. My failure to be able to do so -- though the fault, I feel, is more the blogspot's than mine -- kept me from daring to trytrying to post any poems at all But too many good poems are going by the wayside of this our only NEK Wednesday Poets blog, so I finally decided today -- too long after the earlier efforts for me to even admit how long in fact it's been (maybe it's to be called an involuntary sabbatical) to post the best version the blogspot software would let me and other readers have.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, even though Sylvia's poem was all flush left, which Google Blogspot changes every time, I finally can't stand it's not being posted. It's the responsibility of the blog person -- whatever they're called -- and so here it is. Just imagine it with perfect formatting, all lines beginning on the left, and the epigraph by Grace Paley in italics, spaced in the usual way.