Poetry Friday: Thrush | Louise Gluck

Thrush | Louise Gluck

Snow began falling, over the surface of the whole earth.
That can’t be true. And yet it felt true,
falling more and more thickly over everything I could see.
The pines turned brittle with ice.

This is the place I told you about,
where I used to come at night to see the red-winged blackbirds,
what we call thrush here-
red flicker of the life that disappears-

But for me – I think the guilt I feel must mean
I haven’t lived very well.

Someone like me doesn’t escape. I think you sleep awhile,
then you descend into the terror of the next life
except

the soul is in some different form,
more or less conscious than it was before,
more or less covetous.

After many lives, maybe something changes.
I think in the end what you want
you’ll be able to see-

Then you don’t need anymore
to die and come back again.