Mary asked about social justice or political poems. Here is one by William Stafford that definitely tells it slant. Not only is the ending soft, the whole poem is soft.
At the Bomb Testing Site
At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.
It was looking at something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.
There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.
Charles Simic on Stafford’s Bomb Testing Site:
ReplyDeleteOne should speak of Stafford's disappearing acts. As in "Traveling Through the Dark," he leaves us at the most crucial moments. At the end of his great poems we are always alone, their fateful acts and their consequences now our own to consider.
Thank you, Tony. I love this! I'm going to use the first line as a prompt.
ReplyDeleteThis poem makes me think of the tortoise in Mary's poem!
ReplyDelete