This poem keeps drawing me to it, or it to me, and I don’t know why. The last two lines come back to me when I wake up at night, or sometimes when I’ve been walking or hiking for a long time. I don’t know where I found this poem, or where it found me. Sometimes when I read it, the hard times, I feel like a child who doesn’t know what she did wrong, why she’s being yelled at, a child who would do anything to be better and to make it better. Other times I feel a huge relief, a letting-go, as though the you in the poem, in the ending three lines, has finally found me and I don’t have to keep trying anymore.
[I am], by Vera Pavlova, translated by Steven Seymour
I am
a nail
being driven in
while I try
to keep
straight
hoping
the carpenter
will get tired
or the hammer
will break
or the board
will crack and I
will roll
into a cozy nook
and will find you there
my love
my love
For more information on Vera Pavlova, please click here,
For more information on Steven Seymour, who translated this poem (and who is also, I just found out when I googled him, married to Pavlova), please click here.
