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Article: We did what we had to. (poem)
- Article from:
- The American Poetry Review
- Article date:
- September 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 World Poetry, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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We did what we had to. We went out with our children to gather mushrooms in the forest we planted ourselves when we were children.
We learned the names of the wildflowers whose fragrance was like blood spilled in vain. We loaded a great love onto little bodies. We stood enlarged and reduced by turns in the eyes of the mad god, Holder of the Binoculars,
and in the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, we loved the good soothing dark and hated the painful light. We did what we had to, we loved our childhood better than our homeland. We've already dug all the wells into the ground, and now we're digging into the emptiness of the sky. Wells, wells, ...