A Poem for a Thursday #339

Linda Pastan was the poet laureate of Maryland from 1991-1995. Her poems deal with marriage, family, and grief. Today’s poem is sad but I stopped and read it through twice so it deserves a spot on “Poem for a Thursday.”

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

The Obligation to Be Happy
Linda Pastan