William Stafford Makes Sense Today (Whereas Yesterday Was a Different Story)

Poetry is about more than the right word. It's about more than keeping interest, or using intricate and precise metaphors.

Poetry is about timing. You may read a poem, and not know right away that you need it. But later, when circumstance has caught up with you, you go searching about in your mind for those precise words, like a spell; because someone already said it, and said it deeper than you can in that hard moment. Maybe they understand what is happening to you.

Today, I was grasping for "that poem about how we're all in darkness, and we need to communicate better. Something about the darkness around us is deep." Thank you, William Stafford and the Internet, for this poem and access to it. It is not quite what I thought it was. But I grasp it tightly anyway, understanding today what would have been impossible yesterday. Even the elephants.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

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 dyke.

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 what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, 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 get 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