How to Avoid the Divine

Author Sarah Tate

How to Avoid the Divine

Sarah Tate

Above all, love no one.
You mustn’t know of the rose 
in the valley. Never hear
wine-deepened songs
or see sun through trees 
like fine white shards. 
When you come to a day
of warm swollen weather,
or stumble upon an ordered thing
in a wild place, ivy over walls 
or furrows with primal seeds, 
flee the way you came.

Put it all behind you:
old folks still drawing from wells
every dawn, Alpine smells
(God, how clear the air), 
birds, all kinds, crackling 
in the rust-brown leaves.
Or else it will face you
like a warrior with sword and shield—
a true anguished wonder to shred 
your leather-clad skin
and meet you beard-to-beard.

If you must do something,
work hard without rest or end
until you’re always numb 
with a nothing sort of buzz.
Let seasons pass without melodious order.
Let Earth spin without mythic making.
Memory mustn’t sprinkle its meaning.
There’s no light in the moon.
The pond is not dead calm.
The story is not a dream
remembered at noon.
The boy does not laugh
how your brother used to.

You must never, not once, suffer
the fatigue of your existence 
and question if there’s more, more—
throw aside all rhymes that sound
like news from another world.
Just sit there and wither 
into a modern kind of man,
rich and grand, and leave
the gods for another time.

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