Pagan Virtues by Stephen Dunn

Author:Stephen Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
ISBN: 9781324002321
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

FOR THE HISTORIANS AMONG US

Let’s look at a day, any day, as it moves

toward nightfall, pleasure and catastrophe

occurring at somewhat normal intervals—

and let’s design an instrument to measure the lives

we live, something perhaps with a bell that goes off

when we confuse playing-it-safe with maturity,

or common decency with heroism. And if

such an instrument fails because, once again,

the genius who can build it hasn’t yet arrived

with the eloquence of a solution, let’s acknowledge

most of us just let life happen to us, and how much

depends on the country and year we’re born in,

and the varieties of abuse and love, poverty

and greed, that our parents and their parents

experienced and passed down to us.

Nor should we forget the quest for happiness

is rarely as strong as the quest for survival,

but when it is how interesting to discover

how far we’ll go to attain the seldom attainable.

And let’s instruct the historians among us

to include a chapter on Illusion, and maybe one on

Misunderstanding, and have them keep in mind

that most of our days are comprised

of card games, TV dramas, sex

or at least the thought of it, petty squabbles,

reconciliations—those little enormities.

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