Muriel Rekeyser

This past week I've been reading Out of Silence, a book of selected poems by Muriel Rekeyser. Our final class session tonight for Modernism was centered on the discussion of our favorite poems.

Here is one:

Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values. [dropped line]
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

~ Muriel Rukeyser, from her 1968 book The Speed of Darkness

It's beautiful how we are the "others unseen and unborn" for which she wrote her poems, and we can find solace from her words today, while another war takes place in our world.