The Door: Poems

by Margaret Atwood

I've cut myself off. I can feel the place where I used to be attached. It's raw, as when you grate your finger. It's a shredded mess of images. It hurts. But where exactly on me is this torn-off stem? Now here, now there.

Ignorance makes all things clean. Our knowledge weighs us down.

When will there be compassion? When the dead tree flowers.

Of course there's hope. It's over there in that well. There's an endless supply. Bend over the rim, you'll see. Down there. It looks like silver. It looks like you with the sun behind your head as if your brain is burning. The face dark and without features. But that's a trick of the light. That's hope.