Myth, by Natasha Trethewey

Copyright © 2007 by Natasha Trethewey, who was twice named Poet Laureate of the United States of America, serving that duty from 2012 to 2014.  She currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

Myth appears in Native Guard (Mariner Books of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), book for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 .

Photograph by Jalissa Gray - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15244260

Myth

I was asleep while you were dying.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.

*

Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in—still, trying—

I make between my slumber and my waking.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.



From a 2007 Panhandler Magazine interview from the University of West Florida, Natasha Trethewey candidly states "I am deeply interested in the experience of other human beings, no matter how small or seemingly trivial it is." I wholeheartedly share this sentiment. Note the use of the adjective seemingly modifying trivial. Often enough, human beings trivialize the most important matters and elevate in importance the most irrelevant and trivial of issues. If only people were paying attention, like she is!

love is more thicker than forget

by E. E. Cummings

e.e. cummings enjoys a cigarette
with the characteristic stare of someone
who loves life and, therefore, living.
Hades will have a hard time ever
finding this man, :)

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky





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For a review of the background to the life, poetic style, and historical context that shaped E. E. Cummings' exceptional body of work, please read the brief essay immediately after the following poem—

•  "since feeling is first"

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You may also enjoy these other poems by Edward Estlin Cummings:

• "now does our world descend"

• "if you like my poems"

• "as freedom is a breakfastfood"

SONNET 94, by William Shakespeare

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,...
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.