About Not Writing

Tongue-tied, I stand before

Myself as inquisitor.

I loved to mark time

With a beat, with rhyme.

Time marked me with its thumb,

Slowed down the pendulum.

Slowed it down, or stopped:

Words were lopped, words dropped—

No use to devise

Reasons or alibis.

Now, strangely, I draw breath

Well past my ninetieth.

What’s begun is almost done,

Still I must brood upon

The much that I sought,

The little that I wrought,

Till time brings its own

Lockjaw of stone.

Credit

Author

Naomi Replansky

Naomi Replansky was born in the Bronx on May 23, 1918. The daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, she began writing poems at a young age. By her mid-teens, she was publishing poems in literary journals and anthologies. Replansky studied history at Hunter College but did not finish her degree, opting instead to go to work. During the 1940s and 1950s, she worked in a factory in New York City and as a translator in Los Angeles. In the latter decade, she earned a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Date Published

01/19/2018