Sunday Night Poetry

In Celebration

BY MARK STRAND

You sit in a chair, touched by nothing, feeling   

the old self become the older self, imagining   

only the patience of water, the boredom of stone.   

You think that silence is the extra page,   

you think that nothing is good or bad, not even

the darkness that fills the house while you sit watching

it happen. You’ve seen it happen before. Your friends

move past the window, their faces soiled with regret.

You want to wave but cannot raise your hand.

You sit in a chair. You turn to the nightshade spreading

a poisonous net around the house. You taste   

the honey of absence. It is the same wherever   

you are, the same if the voice rots before   

the body, or the body rots before the voice.

You know that desire leads only to sorrow, that sorrow

leads to achievement which leads to emptiness.   

You know that this is different, that this   

is the celebration, the only celebration,   

that by giving yourself over to nothing,

you shall be healed. You know there is joy in feeling

your lungs prepare themselves for an ashen future,

so you wait, you stare and you wait, and the dust settles

and the miraculous hours of childhood wander in darkness.