The beam by Rachel Hadas - The New Criterion

Poems

January 2008

The beam

Burke

was right!

What I have to give you you don’t want
Or cannot any longer recognize.
What you still seem to want or need I give
Grudgingly, then less and less, and not.

What I need you no longer can give me,
And both of us are angry. So I turn
Away and have for years,
Though rooted to the spot,

Been turning like a beam,
A searchlight hopefully
Or doggedly from sheer
Habit raking the gloom.

Rachel Hadas is co-editor of The Greek Poets (Norton).

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