Edmund Berrigan

Pastures of Plenty

 

I want you to understand

that I don’t know why I’m here.

I was born in another country

with which I now have no association.

I was raised in a New York City

that has been wiped away by economics.

Much of my immediate family has

been removed from this life,

& much of my sense of experience

of this life has been removed with them,

making all of us new people.

I have let much of my sense of self

be informed by an art that is little used

& undervalued. I have sacrificed many

social relationships to these experiences,

which are inextricably linked, because

I come from a family of poets. The life

& values of a poet are antithetical to the

political landscape of the country

I live in, & no political machination

that I may inhabit remotely serves

the causes for which I live, though

I am bound to this land by knowledge of it.

I continue in poetry & song

because the experiences of my senses

are wholly held in these continuous

& inexplicable drives, their reason

& mine never idle or held to law or language.

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