"I Will Not Be Sad In This World" by Rachel Contreni Flynn

I WILL NOT BE SAD IN THIS WORLD

                      after an Armenian melody

Though fog rolls
off the coast,

and a goat turns
its whiskey eye to find me
                               and finds me. . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Though squirrels rise up laughing
even while begging
                               forgiveness. . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Though my hands fill with whelks,
I build cairns, think in Braille,
                               read flatness

in the ocean, and my soul dilates
like onyx.  . . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Not sad, not flesh filled with mist.

And not in this world,
though I crouch among spruce and ghosts
and kiss the mouth

I thought would be soft.

It is tight
                   with dirt.

The goat circles,
and I know. . .

but I will not be sad in this world.


Source of the text - Rachel Contreni Flynn, Ice, Mouth, Song.  Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2005, pp. 68-9.

Bourguignomicon: This refusal-to-mourn litany is built of solid objects & quirky details. Listen to the anaphoric force of “though,” more so than “because.”