The Art of Losing— Poems for the COVID-19 Pandemic

 

“One Art,” by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What the Last Evening Will Be Like,” by Edward Hirsch

New York City–based Edward Hirsch engages with the quiet yet transcendent ordinariness of loss:

You're sitting at a small bay window

in an empty café by the sea.

It's nightfall, and the owner is locking up,

though you're still hunched over the radiator,

which is slowly losing warmth.

Now you're walking down to the shore

to watch the last blues fading on the waves.

You've lived in small houses, tight spaces—

the walls around you kept closing in—

but the sea and the sky were also yours.

No one else is around to drink with you

from the watery fog, shadowy depths.

You're alone with the whirling cosmos.

Goodbye, love, far away, in a warm place.

Night is endless here, silence infinite.