A Brief for the Defense
Column: ‘a poem for such a day as this’
As one of my favourite poets said — poetry is what happens when nothing else can — a notion I agree with wholeheartedly, which is why I am introducing a new column —
a poem for such a day as this
— to share my favourite poems and their creators, some of whom might be familiar and some not.
Whatever the case, I hope they elicit a smile, a grin, a tear, a smirk … or, in Kafka’s words — be an axe for the frozen sea within us.
As always — it would be great to hear your thoughts.
a poem for such a day as today is:
A Brief for the Defense
by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Jack Gilbert, born February 18, 1925, in Pittsburgh, participated in Jack Spicer’s Poetry as Magic workshop at San Francisco State College in 1957.
His debut book, Views of Jeopardy (Yale University Press, 1962), won the Yale Younger Poets Series.
He then received a Guggenheim Fellowship, lived abroad, and toured as a lecturer for the U.S. State Department.
His second book, Monolithos (Knopf, 1982), won the Stanley Kunitz Prize.
Gilbert’s notable works include Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012), Refusing Heaven (Knopf, 2005), and The Great Fires: Poems 1982–1992 (Knopf, 1996).
James Dickey praised Gilbert’s work for its savage compassion.
Gilbert received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
He served as the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and as a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee.
Gilbert passed away on November 13, 2012, in Berkeley, California, after battling Alzheimer’s.
Thank you for reading.
