Written by Maria Popova
“Life will break you,” wrote Louise Erdrich in her passionate insistence that “you are here to risk your heart.” It can happen with a crack, or with a thousand small cracks, but the great irony – the great salvation – is that every time it happens, you live to see that you cannot be broken.
And so, a poem.
REPAIR FOR A BROKEN HEART
by Maria PopovaWhy all the wireless drama,
old tragedy
to call it broken?
It's still beating,
not so,
he still trembles when he sees her
of the mist flowing through the forest
like a slow dance song.
It just happened
removed,
it lost its place
temporarily,
came out of the socket
in a good sense.
There is no
picking up the pieces
because there are no pieces.
Only strong, fastidious
the hand of time
to take it back
in the area.And after all
who can blame
a deviating compass
where the magnetic north pole
it keeps moving
drifting fifty kilometers a year
and the regression itself
every few centuries
and another for twenty-six thousand years
a different north star
comes to shine its guiding light
above all confusion.We are here
losing our way.
