The Door: Poems

by Margaret Atwood

The poet has come back to being a poet after decades of being virtuous instead.

I’m not an angel. I’m only a shadow, the shadow of your desires. I’m only a granter of wishes. Now you have yours.

That’s what I do: I tell dark stories before and after they come true.

Still, why do I feel so responsible for the wailing from shattered houses, for birth defects and unjust wars, and the soft, unbearable sadness filtering down from distant stars?

Don’t search the perennial border: look for me in disturbed earth.