I’m working on a poem that’s so true, I can’t show it to anyone.
I could never show it to anyone.
Because it says exactly what I think, and what I think scares me.
Sometimes it pleases me.
Usually it brings misery.
And this poem says exactly what I think.
What I think of myself, what I think of my friends, what I think about my lover.
Exactly.
Parts of it might please them, some of it might scare them.
Some of it might bring misery.
And I don’t want to hurt them, I don’t want to hurt them.
I don’t want to hurt anybody.
I want everyone to love me.
Still, I keep working on it.
Why?
Why do I keep working on it?
Nobody will ever see it.
Nobody will ever see it.
I keep working on it even though I can never show it to anybody.
I keep working on it even though someone might get hurt.
– Lloyd Schwartz
Postscript:
I find several things appealing about the poem; the idea of a poem so true it hurts, of how sometimes the truth hurts people, but the narrator can’t stop writing the poem. This raises the question then – is it that the truth is so compelling, that it is a relief, or that the narrator needs the satisfaction of the truth even if only in private?
You can read a short bio of Schwartz here. You can read an interesting interview of him talking about Elizabeth Bishop here.
Tagged: Lloyd Schwartz, poems about poetry, truth, unsettling