Monday, September 26, 2016

Anna Moschovakis


[The challenge: to start]

Related Poem Content Details

The challenge: to start
not with theory but with tangible performance

You and others, approaching

We shall be asked for a way out

                to be fed

                to keep warm and dry

Starting with experience, magic 
genuine science

More than once we have been lost 
in a trackless wilderness

dwarfed and shadowed by mighty buildings 
subway trains wild as elephants

One goes blindly back to one’s desk

These moments come, their dark 
shadow

We glimpsed control 
and more tragic waste

We entered with 40,000,000 warriors 
with the dignity of cathedrals

The lake is upon you.
You have two canoes, your tent
The child has entered upon this desert

You have your axes

What, precisely, is your procedure?

Anna Moschovakis, “[The challenge: to start]” from You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake. Copyright © 2011 by Anna Moschovakis. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehouse.org
Source: You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake (Coffee House Press, 2011)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56495


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