Matthew Zapruder: ‘Failed Elegy’ – The Atlantic

It appears today
each poem is a failed elegy

for the world. Every one
asks accurately, what good

did scripting this do? I can’t
deny I typically really feel anger

on the similarities between me
and an oil firm, particularly

on what’s as soon as once more
the most well liked day ever recorded.

It’s so simple to do nothing
besides lament our success

at writing ineffective laments.
I have to confess I too

as soon as wrote a ridiculous elegy
for a damaged nail clipper.

I mentioned it caught the sunshine
of a distant star the place beings

look down on us, dissatisfied
but hopeful we’ll, like poets,

put issues in the fitting order
simply in time. The clipper

emitted a complicated not very
mysterious blue mild. Typically

it appears to me the job of a poet
is generally to rearrange the deck chairs

subsequent to an ideal blue
swimming pool, then in these

chairs to doze. In one other failed
elegy I described how all day

we walked by mist to get
to the precise spot the place Dean specified

we should always disperse his ashes.
It was windy, and we acquired a variety of him

on our fingers. Within the poem I wrote
he shares the title of a chef

at Infinity Hospital, which sounds
like however will not be a ravishing lie.

Then I wrote, after I think about how
he will need to have felt to attempt to write

poems with a brand new coronary heart
he acquired from somebody youthful

who died, I really feel mine
fill with the echo of substitute,

which was not precisely or maybe
too true. The reality is I walked

alongside by the mist pondering
many boring issues, not feeling

a lot of something besides
like stopping. We walked

by a discipline of wildflowers
that left some yellow powder

on our footwear. I simply needed
to be house with my spouse and son,

however the mist actually did appear infinite.
Not like loss of life, it was not. We drove

slowly by the little city
till we discovered a spot to eat

and didn’t communicate of loss of life.
Talking of talking of loss of life,

Emily Dickinson in contrast herself
to the little wren as a result of she knew

it was small and unremarkable.
It sings essentially the most notes and typically

will take a journey for a short time
to eternity within the overcoat

of a passing stranger.

This poem seems within the December 2024 print version. It has been excerpted from Matthew Zapruder’s assortment, I Love Listening to Your Desires.