They say the world is round,
And yet I think it’s Square:
So many little Hurts we get
From its Corners, here and there.²
The Sufferers die, they leave their pain:
The Pangs which tortured them remain—
Inheritors of thy distress have restless
Hearts one throb the less.³
We Writhe—and press Bitter
Utterances from our writhing—⁴
We accept acute physical pain, we endure it
Complainingly or defiantly, we feel it swell & increase,
And sometimes there’s a Raging, Mocking Curiosity—
As to how much further the pain can go:⁵
he mark of rank in nature is Capacity
For pain: the Anguish of the singer
Makes the Sweetest of the strain!⁶
We are stunned that the sun
Shines so bright after all our pain—⁷
Heavenly hurt—we can find no scar,
But internal difference, where the Meanings are.⁸
We let the Hurts blow through our
Branches like a breeze, and use the
Music of rustling leaves as a Balm.⁹
In the eternal saga of pain, we are
Teardrops in the dove’s Cooing.¹⁰
¹ David Foster Wallace, Forever Overhead
² Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Life’s Scars
³ Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
⁴ Wallace Stevens, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
⁵ Hermann Hesse tr. Hilda Rosner, The Journey to the East
⁶ Sarah Williams, Is It True?
⁷ Audre Lorde, Walking Our Boundaries
⁸ Emily Dickinson, There’s a Certain Slant of Light
⁹ Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
¹⁰ Mahmoud Darwish tr. Amira El-Zein, The Kindhearted Villagers