Linda Pastan reads

why are your poems so dark?

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.


BONUS: Watch Linda Pastan read “why are your poems so dark?”.
Recorded for the Poetry Everywhere Project at the Geraldine R. Dodge
Poetry Festival.