Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

The picture of elegance, my grandfather.
I wanted his photograph in the dictionary.
Alone of the men I knew as a kid, 
he always wore a shirt with a collar,
always shined his shoes. Equanimity
in a family on the run from itself.
He amazed me once with a cardboard box
of baby chicks, each in a small square as if
he’d waved a wand over a carton of eggs.
A fuzz of feathers, beaks and fragile lives.
No more afraid than all of us, he said.
Just sit with them, tell them apart, listen.
Only if you see someone, can you become
someone. Long gone, he still is and they are.

^{If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to
find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.
—Thomas Merton, from “New Seeds of Contemplation,” 1961}

^{I swear to God, mom, I am exhausted, but praise be to God in all circumstances.
—writing, translated from the Arabic, on the Al-Shifa Hospital walls, April 2024}

All I can see is nothing
Fields of

Hollow
The O that escapes

A pasture of
Mouths

An apartment building
Of locked jaws

The silent weeping
Of rocks

I hear nothing
In the bags of soft limbs sighing

Milk teeth
Sharpening a father’s heart

The cone hat on the small head
Singing to plumes

Iftar in the tents
Flapping pages off the moon

But Your name over and over
On the hospital walls

But Your name stilling
The fire that does not cease

But Your name everywhere
Everything all at once

I see nothing
From this distance

This deepest night
This longest darkness

Fumble at fajr
To loosen my gasps

I repeat Your name
Over and over

Then bow to Your wisdom
To the terror of Your liberation

O that I may not see anything
More

^{translated from the German by Samantha Rose Hill and Genese Grill}

I am only one
of those things,
the low one
that won
out of ardor.

Enclose me in your hands,
as they shake
to excess
to bring you success
when you’re anxious.*

*Arendt wrote this poem in her notebook and transcribed it on the same page as the previous poem [“Drive Through France”] when she returned to New York. The only modification from the notebook is the lowering of capital letters at the beginning of each line.

Mit einem Ding

Bin nur eines
von den Dingen,
den geringen,
das gelang
aus Überschwang.

Schliesse mich in Deine Hände,
dass sie schwingend
überschwingen
ins Gelingen,
wenn Dir bang ist.

I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,

As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.

Without you I'd be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.

Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?

One sunny Autumn day 
When I went out to play,
An Elf-man in a tree
Dropped colored leaves on me.

the unholy trinity of suburban late-night salvation
barring seemingly endless options of worship

bean burrito breadsticks and mashed potatoes
or a soft taco pan pizza and a buttered biscuit

an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents

and yet none of the options feel quite right
so maybe I should call it Self-Portrait as idling

in a drive-thru with your friends crammed
across the sunken bench seats avoiding

the glow of the check engine light with black tape
pressed with a precision unseen anywhere else

in their lives as a fractured voice says don’t worry
take your time and order whenever you’re ready

from behind a menu backlit like the window
inside of a confessional booth as the hands

of the driver open up like a collection basket
for the wadded-up bills and loose change

that slowly stack up as the years go by
and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be

in this analogy but I know about masking
warning signs and hearing out of tune

voices scream WE’RE THE KIDS WHO FEEL
LIKE DEAD ENDS so instead I’ll call it Self-

Portrait as From Under the Cork Tree
or maybe even Self-Portrait as whatever

album people listen to when they love
their friends and still want to feel connected

to the grass walls of a teenage wasteland
that they can’t help but run away from

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Small fellowship of daily commonplace
    We hold together, dear, constrained to go
   Diverging ways. Yet day by day I know
   My life is sweeter for thy life’s sweet grace;
And if we meet but for a moment’s space,
   Thy touch, thy word, sets all the world aglow.
   Faith soars serener, haunting doubts shrink low,
   Abashed before the sunshine of thy face.
Nor press of crowd, nor waste of distance serves
   To part us. Every hush of evening brings
   Some hint of thee, true-hearted friend of mine;
And as the father planet thrills and swerves
   When towards it through the darkness Saturn swings,
   Even so my spirit feels the spell of thine.

¹⁸⁸⁸

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
   Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
                   But never knew I this;
                   Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.