The weeping song
Now that I am old
I have a new relationship with weeping.
I weep for commercials
and white butterflies.
For ugly children and their children,
lonesome roads gray
as heaven. The tax system.
My ghost in flames under the ash tree.
I weep for the joy of weeping.
For the marathon runner, long-distance
trucker, poet, farmer—
all who are professionally acquainted
with endlessness.
When I was young, I wept
for pain. Now
I weep for beauty
and his bastard son darkness
and his wife my life.
Donate
This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 34 Number 2 , on page 29
Copyright © 2024 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2015/10/the-weeping-song