Dearly: New Poems

by Margaret Atwood

It’s late, it’s very late; too late for dancing. Still, sing what you can. Turn up the light: sing on, sing: On.

Don’t look behind, they say: You’ll turn to salt. Why not, though? Why not look? Isn’t it glittery? Isn’t it pretty, back there?

First taste of sheer ambrosia! Though mixed with ash and the shards of destruction as Heaven always is, if you read the texts closely.

Me, it’s the heart: that’s the part lacking. I used to want one: a dainty cushion of red silk dangling from a blood ribbon, fit for sticking pins in. But I’ve changed my mind. Hearts hurt.

That room has been static for me so long: an emptiness a void a silence containing an unheard story ready for me to unlock. Let there be plot.

It’s what you hope too, right? That beyond death, there’s flight? After the shrouding, up you’ll rise, delicate wings and all. Oh honey, it won’t be like that. Not quite.

After we’re gone the work of our knives will survive us.

The aliens arrive. We like the part where we get saved. We like the part where we get destroyed. Why do those feel so similar? Either way, it’s an end. No more just being alive. No more pretend.

We are a dying symphony. No bird knows this, but us—we know what our night magic does. Our dark light magic.

We long to pay that much attention. But we’ve lost the knack; also there’s other music. All we hear in the wind’s plainsong is the wind.

manoeuvring our way through package and wrapping, cutting our way to our food through the layer by layer that keeps it fresher, and doesn’t everyone? What happened before? How did we ever survive with only paper and glass and tin and hemp and leather and oilskin?

We know there will be waves. Not much life needed for those.

Do we have goodwill? To all mankind? Not any more. Did we ever? When the gods frown, the weather’s bad. When they smile the sun shines. We smile all the time now, smiles of the lobotomized, and the world fries. Sorry about that. We got stupid. We drink martinis and go on cruises. Whatever we touch turns red.

Birds don’t need them, those lost names. We needed them, but that was then. Now, who cares? Lions don’t know they are lions. They don’t know how brave they are.

I’ll skip dinner, the kind with linens and candles lit for two. I’ll be alone, sitting across from an absence.

Dearly beloved, gathered here together in this closed drawer, fading now, I miss you. I miss the missing, those who left earlier. I miss even those who are still here. I miss you all dearly. Dearly do I sorrow for you. Sorrow: that’s another word you don’t hear much any more. I sorrow dearly.

Some berries occur in sun, but they are smaller. It’s as I always told you: the best ones grow in shadow.