Sleepless Nights
Lately I’ve lain in bed with a disembodied voice, listening
to the ancient Greek myths and their meanings, imagining
Athens and Naxos and Thebes, imagining infants left to die
on hillsides, Oedipus abandoned and then rescued by
a shepherd, no one could avoid their fate, not then, maybe not ever,
if you knew what was coming would you dig a burrow or cower
in the shade of a grass blade as the shadow of the hawk passed over
or would you be like Antigone, defying the king, refusing to dishonor
her slain brother, sentenced to entombment she hung herself—
maybe you know that story, or the one about Nelson Mandela
and his fellow inmates at Robben Island performing the ancient play,
learning it secretly from scraps of paper—or Verlaine’s
“Chanson d’automne” on the BBC, in 1944, the long sobs of the violins,
just a few words to signal the French Resistance, imagine.
Copyright © 2026 by Kim Addonizio. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 30, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Myth rhymes with history, and history keeps on rhyming in the push-pull of authoritarianism and individual freedoms. By now I think we have a good idea of what’s coming, as well as what’s already here. Chekhov asserts that the writer’s job is to accurately frame the questions. In trying to do that, I also wanted to note some possible answers.”
—Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio's poetry collections include Exit Opera (W. W. Norton, 2024), Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W. W. Norton, 2021), Lucifer at the Starlite (W. W. Norton, 2009); What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2004); and Tell Me (BOA Editions, 2000), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.