"A Ritual to Read to Each Other" -- Signed Broadside by William Stafford (2 of 2)

"A Ritual to Read to Each Other" -- Signed Broadside by William Stafford (2 of 2)

 

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star

 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

 

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

But if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

To know that occurs but not recognize the fact.

 

And so I appeal, to something shadowy,

A remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider –

lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.

 

For it is important that awake people be awake,

Or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

The signals we give – yes, or no, or maybe –

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 

William Stafford (1914–1993) was an American poet. He was appointed the twentieth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970. In 1975, he was named Poet Laureate of Oregon; his tenure in the position lasted until 1990. He published 68 books of poetry and received the National Book Award in 1963 for Traveling Through the Dark.

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