POEMS by ALICIA OSTRIKER
SAVING IT Some think the world can be saved by love some think it can be saved by intelligence It is the old quarrel of the heart and the head each of which would be dead without its rival and although I am of those who doubt it can be saved too many people greedy too many in the kind of pain that perpetuates itself generation after generation who cannot save themselves from the chokehold of anger or from chasing oblivion long enough to do the world any good some say that is what bodhisattvas are for but regarding tikkun olam, I hear the rabbis say It is not incumbent on you to finish the task neither are you free to give it up
IS THIS REAL Let me see, is this real Let me see, is this real Let me see, is this real This life I am living. —Navajo prayer Nose in that book/ white lightning but/ no eagle no galloping horse/ I was twenty lacking enough silence/ no spacious cactus vista/ nevertheless yes yes white lightning this question ozone year chases year wishing I had a tribe to tell me the answer no answer/ asking myself no answer/ asking God asking in my pajamas aching/ asking in my silks lifting the cocktail asking sidewalk sycamore is this real/ men foraging in wastebaskets is this real the suffering and anger in city air thickening every year is it real my white apartment/ is it real my sixty year marriage asking if the sky’s headscarf is real if the Hudson sturgeon a highway away is real is this real my life/ fool teacher poet/ mother lover wife/ tulip now wilting Is this real/ now mask and distance/ it is my life/ let me see before death gathers me please let me finally see Alicia Ostriker is a poet, critic, and activist whose most recent collection of poems is The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems, 2002–2019 (University of Pittsburgh Press).
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