The Feast by Robert Hass

 The holidays are here. 2020 has taken so much from me. The world has taken what it wants. This is what survival looks like. 

I started this blog a decade ago, in the states. Now I’m elsewhere, surviving. I do not know what it means to be living, but I still have dreams of when I was younger. Age is ageless. It is what keeps us growing from year to year, hopefully. 

Poetry is what keeps me going. So I’d like to share a few best loved poems here, starting today. It would be nice to have your company, you hunched over a cup of hot chocolate, reading my words. Words are powerful. It is what keeps us tied to each other, our words, our echoes, our footprints in this one life. 

The Feast
by Robert Hass

The lovers loitered on the deck talking,
the men who were with men and the men who were with new women,
a little shrill and electric, and the wifely women
who had repose and beautifully lined faces
and coppery skin. She had taken the turkey from the oven
and her friends were talking on the deck
in the steady sunshine. She imagined them
drifting toward the food, in small groups, finishing
sentences, lifting a pickle or a sliver of turkey
nibbling a little with unconscious pleasure. And
she imagined setting it out artfully, the white meat,
the breads, the antipasto, the mushrooms and salad,
arranged down the oak counter cleanly, and how they all came
as in a dance when she called them. She carved meat
and then she was crying. Then she was in darkness

crying. She didn’t know what she wanted.

 

From “Praise,” published by Ecco Press.