Refrain
Sometimes still
like light I catch
the mermaids’ singing
swimming back to me,
a certain strain on the air.
They sing for the hell of it.
The pure, fresh hell.
Snow on the inconsolable shore.
Somehow still,
half a person later,
I know all the words.
Or would, were there words
to the chorus the mermaids,
who are angels, my sisters, make.
I changed my face
but my face was still there:
neither innocent nor gay
nor heartless.
I lean out, no longer dangerously,
and answer them.
Copyright © 2026 by Jameson Fitzpatrick. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 10, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I want to say I don’t know where this poem came from—an unusual feeling for me. But of course it came from [T. S.] Eliot, and [Anne] Sexton, and [François] Villon, and [J. M.] Barrie, and [Louise] Glück. And then I remember, too, that its oldest lines I turned over in my mind for eight years before setting down. So I suppose it is truer to say there are meanings here that persist, pleasurably, in eluding me.”
—Jameson Fitzpatrick
Jameson Fitzpatrick
