Friday, December 31, 2010

a request for 2011


A Short Testament

by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches.

"A Short Testament" by Anne Porter, from Living Things. © Zoland Books




4 comments:

  1. On death's bare branches is where a lot of life's unfinished business lands.

    Soulful Miles Davis. Great images with this YouTube and the focus on the inner workings of your flower.

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  2. Happy New Year rr! Great poem to end/start the old/new

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  3. This is one of my most favorite of Miles' cuts. It fits so well with your photo. And Kass' remark is so true.

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  4. kass-so true. hanging from those branches, a tough place from which to finish things.

    tr-same to you! and thanks for the poem.

    okatb-i agree. more and more, i'm finding that music shows me images, and photos make music.

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