A Brief For the Defense

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere.
Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace,
they are starving somewhere else.
With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives
because that's what God wants.
Otherwise
the mornings before summer dawn
would not be made so fine.
The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well.
The poor women at the fountain
are laughing together between
the suffering they have known
and the awfulness in their future,
smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick.
There is laughter every day
in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh
in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness,
resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance
of their deprivation.
We must risk delight.
We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment.
We must have the stubbornness
to accept our gladness
in the ruthless furnace of this world.
To make injustice the only measure
of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord
runs us down,
we should give thanks
that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music
despite everything.
We stand at the prow again
of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island:
the waterfront is three shuttered cafés
and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars
in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back
is truly worth all the years
of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert

Posted over on The Poetry Center