Kay Ryan: "Why We Must Struggle"

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double how
we can feed
as upon nectar,
upon need?






 
"Why We Must Struggle" by Kay Ryan. Text as published in Say Uncle: Poems (Grove Press, 2000).

Art credit: "Village child is climbing on the tree," photograph taken in west India on March 2, 2007, by ommishra.