The World
didn’t change much
at first. At
first it
didn’t change
much, at first I
didn’t—I don’t—
change much.
At first we
didn’t & they
didn’t & the atmosphere
stayed the same
or enough to seem
the same. The same.
I say the word
out loud to my-
self. Who changed I
think. What started out & then
disappeared without
actually dis-
appearing. It’s so quiet
in here. It’s so
quiet now. The now
used to be a noisy
place & now
it is so
still. Where is everyone
I think. What is it
that is dis-
possessed. Can it ever be re-
possessed. Never?
Now and again your soul
wakes up in
spurts asking
what is—or is there—a just
struggle. Then you,
then I, cry out
where are you
everyone. We were in one world
& then was it u or
us or them or no one in
particular—in
particular my heart
leaps at that—oh
in particular—but no one
answers & no one
came along in the end.
And that was when
the end began.
I only just realized
it. Only just heard
no one survived—or is it they
still hide, above
the cries, no
child, no one
replies, no one not
blind, confined,
lined-up, wired-up, piled-
up, made to
comply, des-
pised, compromised, the soul
perpetually dis-
guised, the words even
the right words
cannot be un-
furled from breath from
mind oh
memory no cannot be
dug up dug up from
this buried world.
- Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Killing Spree; To 2040, a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; [To] The Last [Be] Human, which collects four extraordinary poetry collections—including Sea Change, Place, Fast, and Runaway; From the New World: Poems 1976–2014, P L A C E, winner of the Forward Prize in 2012; and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974–1994, winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her other poetry collections include Overlord, Never, Swarm, The Errancy, Materialism, Region of Unlikeness, The End of Beauty, Erosion, and Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003 and has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language and Best American Poetry 1990. She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, the first woman to be awarded the position.
- Email: joriegraham.com
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