Another Elegy
To believe in God is to love
What none can see. Let a lover go,
Let him walk out with the good
Spoons or die
Without a signature, and so much
Remains for scrubbing, for a polish
Cleaner than devotion. Tonight,
God is one spot, and you,
You must be one blind nun. You
Wipe, you rub, but love won’t move.
Copyright © 2013 by Jericho Brown. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on April 9, 2013. Browse the Poem-a-Day archive.
"Someone I loved died, then someone I loved left me, then this happened where I teach (now on a leave of absence). And I guess I have yet to get over Sylvia Plath's, 'I am a nun now. I have never been so pure.'"
Jericho Brown
Raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Jericho Brown won the 2009 American Book Award for his debut collection Please (New Issues, 2008). He is also the author of The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), which received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.