Endure - A Poem by Mara Lemanis
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Endure
It’s an axiom
this freight that drives us
can’t endure
my body is a mist
exhaled by aged sequoias
my microbes fill the heavens
toss tiny pearls into a mural
like a luminous shroud
that mists and weeps
as warm hooks into cold
as sea soaks spores of sky
The powers of nature
we’ve trained to pump for tar
refine it into heady wine that
makes our motors run
and lights the sights
we’ve trapped for our
efficient cause and purposes
— the heat, wind, floods,
the waters we made stew
that cook our ice —
those powers can’t endure
the things we’ve seized
beyond their will
We regret the outcome
but goad the doom to come
like tourists spellbound, proud
up on a southeast archipelago
we gape as 10-foot lizards
thrash tails and claws
wolf down whole goats and deer
while clefts beneath our feet
gape back and sweep
us into chasms;
pride without wit
will not endure
readiness is all
that will
                                                      Mara Lemanis
Mara Lemanis
Biography: Mara Lemanis is a literary scholar. Her essays have been selected for 20th CENTURY LITERARY CRITICISM and are included in undergraduate student textbooks in the U.S.
She has worked as an archivist for Historical Preservation and with the IRC, assisting refugees in Oakland, California.
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