Deceiving the Gods

The old Jews rarely admitted good fortune.
And if they did, they'd quickly add kinahora—
let the evil eye not hear. What dummkopf
would think the spirits were on our side?
But even in a tropical paradise
laden with sugarcane and coconut,
something like the shtetl's wariness exists.
In Hawaii, I'm told, a fisherman
never spoke directly, lest the gods
arrive at the sea before him.
Instead he'd look to the sky,
the fast-moving clouds, and say,
I wonder if leaves are falling in the uplands!
Let us go and gather leaves.
So, my love, today let's not talk at all.
Let's be like those couples
eating silently in restaurants,
barely a word the entire meal.
We pitied them, but now I see
they were always so much smarter than we were.

- Ellen Bass

Listen

Listen, and you will realize
that we are made
not from cells or from atoms. 
We are made from stories.

- Mia Couto

A Work of Fiction

As I turned over the last page, after many nights, a wave of sorrow enveloped me.
Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real?
To distract myself, I walked out into the night;
instinctively, I lit a cigarette.
In the dark, the cigarette glowed, like a fire lit by a survivor.
But who would see this light, this small dot among the infinite stars?
I stood a while in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small,
each breath patiently destroying me.
How small it was, how brief.
Brief, brief, but inside me now,
which the stars could never be.

- Louise Glück

This is what was bequeathed us

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

- Gregory Orr
from How Beautiful the Beloved