For Your Quarantine Sanity – a poem for April 9, 2020
Thanks to Stosh Cotler for sharing this beautiful poem. If someone has a link for me to post to the original, please let me know and I’ll add it.
Former Jesuit Refugee Services
And when we finally hug again
I propose, brothers, not to return one
to others or with the same eyes
Not even with the same arms.
After the flood the river returns to the channel,
to be the same river, without memory
of the drowned and their broken body.
And after the fire the forest returns
to be the same forest, no memory
from the crying of burnt trees
No recognition of the mantillo
that from pain nourishes the roots.
But you and I have souls, minds.
The man who returns from the desert
never looks at a glass of water again
Likewise; who lived the famine
never again will hold the same way
a handful of wheat between his fingers.
When we finally get to hug
let’s not return to each other
with the same look, the same verb,
same heart, same arms.
When we hug again, the morning
full of kisses, tears, caresses,
let our arms be new arms,
wiser, more clement, more human
