Don’t Flinch

Photo by Darrell Berry.

Don’t Flinch

Lichen-green lines of shingle pulsate and waver
when you lift your eyes. It’s the glare. Don’t flinch
The news you were reading
(who tramples whom) is antique
and on the death pages you’ve seen already
worms doing their normal work
on the life that was: the chewers chewing
at a sensuality that wrestled doom
an anger steeped in love they can’t
even taste. How could this still
shock or sicken you? Friends go missing, mute
nameless. Toss
the paper. Reach again
for the Iliad. The lines
pulse into sense. Turn up the music
Now do you hear it? can you smell smoke
under the near shingles?

This poem first appeared in Granta 111: Going Back. Read a new poem by Adrienne Rich in the latest issue of Granta, Exit Strategies.