"Enlightenment" by Vijay Seshadri

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 1, 2018   Enlightenment   Vijay Seshadri

"It's all empty, empty," he said to himself. "The sex and drugs. The violence, especially." So he went down into the world to exercise his virtue,   thinking maybe that would help. He taught a little kid to build a kite. He found a cure, and then he found a cure   for his cure. He gave a woman at the mercy of the weather his umbrella, even though icy rain fell and he had pneumonia. He settled a revolution in Spain.   Nothing worked. The world happens, the world changes, the world, it is written here, in the next line, is only its own membrane—   and, oh yes, your compassionate nature, your compassion for our kind.            Copyright © 2018 Vijay Seshadri. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I wrote 'Enlightment' because I was thinking about the state of the world, which people do these days more than they used to, I suspect. I can't say, of course, that the poem adds anything to our understanding. It was the feeling of the thinking that I wanted." —Vijay Seshadri   Vijay Seshadri is the author, most recently, of 3 Sections (Graywolf Press, 2013), which received the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Poetry by Seshadri   3 Sections (Graywolf Press, 2015) "Now That We Have Tasted Hope" by Khaled Mattawa "Autumn Passage" by Elizabeth Alexander "Faith" by Tim Seibles January Guest Editor: Kaveh Akbar   Thanks to Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Akbar and our other guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038