January & February 2020
Vol V No I
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Published bi-monthly
Sarah Ruden Five Poems
Spring
My enemy had hatched her young,
Made real the prim, loud boasts she’d sung,
And when I saw the pampered thing,
I said it wouldn’t fly or sing.
My talons tightened on its fluff.
Their points were digging deep enough
That blood and dung and shrieks sprang out—
This wasn’t what I’d thought about
Those long weeks in my moldy hollow.
No, by all rights it didn’t follow
That, blood to blood, its heart, my pulse
Battered each other. It convulsed
Against no claws or hard joints now
But two plain, helpless hands. Yet how—
When quickly as a lamp is lit,
It grew, then slashed and gouged and bit
Up in the harrow of the air—
Was I to take my prey back there?
I struck, I buckled. He might know,
Who hung, millennia ago
From nails like mine but didn’t leave
Even the predator to grieve.
But where was He? Nothing below
Appeared but damp trees, ragged snow,
Dead reeds—a dead end like a cave;
Like smoke, for all the light it gave.
My wings were withering, but I
Must make my way through that cold sky
To somewhere that could hardly be,
With what I’d taken into me.
First published in National Review, vol. 65, #16 (September 2, 2013), p. 36.
Lament
We couldn’t get our special wine
(And Pharaoh said, “Not me, not mine”).
We’re not the people to complain,
But at that very instant, rain—
As in some awful movie—fell
In solid sheets, vacation hell!
I’d never seen a thicker flood
Of first-born deaths, and frogs, and blood—
The terrace roof insanely battered,
The couple by the railings spattered—
Their ruined anniversary!
Just a bad joke, it seems to me;
And us, without our special wine
(And Pharaoh said, “Not me, not mine”).
First published in Commonweal, vol. 143, #14.
A Refugee
My womb
Was brought here safe, but for the rest
There was no room;
As when a breast
Or crotch or calloused hand
Washed up alone alive.
The fine, clean sand
Dared anything less useful to arrive.
There at the start,
A roped crate, with a stamp
That certified a premium brain or heart
Sat waiting on a ramp.
They said a bruised, a full, still-clenching fist,
The widest eyes, a waist precisely spare—
I marveled, so specific was the list—
Were hurtled, sipping cognac, through the air.
I envy no one, though.
I sent my womb,
Here, where I couldn’t go,
An empty tomb.
First published in Today’s American Catholic.
The Divorce
In a small way, the foreign residents
Are rounded up—the Spartans sit and comb
Their hair, watched by the Persians from their tents—
Rationing starts—the diplomats go home—
But all discretely, ordinarily—
Toy Lusitanias sink in the bath:
So with no end in pomp and amnesty,
No noisy choking on the wine of wrath.
And next door, in my living room tonight,
My “Who could tell?” just parodies a scene
Of teenage mourners burning flags; I might
As well be ranting on a simmering screen.
The child is laughing still, at three years old,
Out in the yard, with its ghost tanks on track.
She’s with her aunt and hasn’t yet been told
By diplomats who’re never going back.
First published in Commonweal.
The Man Robbed and Beaten and Left for Dead
(Luke 10: 30-33)
Across the level road I see
Somebody. He looks back at me.
(And help will come, or help will pass
By these outdated wisps of grass.)
No height or depth can intervene.
Only the smooth stones lie between.
How was my agony outrun?
I have poured out the wind and sun
(Crickets and flies and passersby)
And only watch from where I lie.
First published in National Review, vol. 63, #14.
Sarah Ruden