Poem: This Much I Know
This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution is from David Adès.
This Much I Know
Even though we have mastered ruin,
invented more ways than we can count
to inflict damage, to break bodies
and hearts and minds, so that
we cannot truly bear ourselves,
each other, the vandalism of the world,
the brokenness all around,
nor how love, alone, is not salve enough,
cannot itself heal all that is broken,
feel how the air hums and sings,
the waves dance, and we, still breathing,
broken though we are,
have another day to unwrap the gifts awaiting us,
so many gifts if we but open our eyes,
if we allow goodness and grace their full dominion.
Adelaide-born poet and short story writer David Adès now lives in Sydney, where he convenes the WestWords Poets’ Corner monthly poetry podcast series. His own work has appeared in literary magazines in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Rumania and Israel, and his collections Mapping the World, 2008, Only the Questions Are Eternal, 2015, Afloat in Light, 2017, are to be followed by the forthcoming ‘The Heart’s Lush Gardens’ and ‘A Blink of Time’s Eye’. ‘Mapping the World’ was commended for the 2008 FAW Anne Elder Award, and he was the winner of the 2005 Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize, and 2014 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. David is a Pushcart Prize double nominee, and he has been shortlisted for a number of other prizes in Australia, the US and Israel.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.