A Syllabus for the Dark Ahead

I’d never heard of Jehanne Dubrow or her poetry before someone recently posted the poem below on Facebook. I copied and pasted it immediately into a folder on my desktop that I titled “Poems for Dark Times.” Reading the poem weeks after its first posting, I’m even more emotionally moved by it. 

Lately, I find myself mumbling zombie-like at my reflection in the mirror (first thing in the morning after scanning the news), What happened? How could this be? The political reality I took for granted for all of my adult life (I was not an astute political observer as a child or teen) is deliberately being eviscerated by the hour.

Whether we call ourselves liberals or conservatives, libertarians or autocrats, Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, none of us who lives (documented or not) within the borders of the United States, and well beyond them, will escape the devastating consequences of this administration. Its fever dream of destruction––of structures, policies, protocols and guardrails, that I for one, took for granted until a mere four weeks ago, is progressing at warp speed. Imagine, not a bare month has passed since this waking nightmare began its relentless scouring of our country’s principles and policies.

As a writer, I have always found solace in the words of others (mostly poets) in times of personal emotional anguish. When I came across “A Syllabus for Dark Times,” I immediately resonated with its language and content. I share it with you now with the hope that its words and images speak to you in whatever way offers instruction, comfort and enjoyment.

A Syllabus for the Dark Ahead

Throughout this course, we’ll study the American landscape of our yard, coiled line

of the garden hose, muddy furrows in the grass awaiting our analysis,

what’s called close reading of the ground. And somewhere something will yip in pain

perhaps, a paw caught in a wire, or else the furred and oily yowling of desire.

And flickering beyond the fence, we’ll see the slatted lives of strangers. The light

above a neighbor’s porch will be a test of how we tolerate the half-illumination

of uncertainty, a glow that’s argument to shadow. Or if not that, we’ll write an essay

on the stutter of the bulb, the little glimmering that goes

before the absolute of night.

— Jehanne Dubrow Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 30, 2017, by the Academy of AmericanPoets.