A poem - Elegy in Joy

Elegy in Joy [excerpt]
by Muriel Rukeyser

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children:
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.

Quiet Acclamation

It is a quiet acclamation
That more lights the soul
Then is shouted to the wind

Wait
I must go back
To when I couldn’t even say it
I couldn’t even say
Cancer
Like a dry moth stuck fluttering for freedom
Choking my voice
My body didn’t want to know this word
Its terror cut me in pieces
Like shards of shattered fragile glass
Scattered in the darkness
Where I had little to cling to
A little hope and a little faith
But as milestones passed
And with many acts of Love
Slowly the slivers and shards have come back together
Each hurdle crossed
A triumph of its own
Triumphs that grow and gather
To where I shouted
To battle the fear
I AM A CANCER SURVIVOR
To make sound the space
Where the light of hope and love
Would glow and grow again
A verbal defiance against death
Now to see how far I have come
Come out of the darkness
Into Love’s warm light
Where I can whisper
With pride
Knowing the universe hears me
I am a Cancer Survivor