Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Maybe Very Happy by Jack Gilbert


Note to Self: I need to read Jack Gilbert. Every poem I have come across, like this one, from today’s The Writer’s Almanac, I have found immensely pleasurable.

Maybe Very Happy
by Jack Gilbert
After she died he was seized

by a great curiosity about what

it was like for her. Not that he

doubted how much she loved him.

But he knew there must have been

some things she had not liked.

So he went to her closest friend

and asked what she complained of.

"It's all right," he had to keep

saying, "I really won't mind."

Until the friend finally gave in.

"She said sometimes you made a noise

drinking your tea if it was very hot."

"Maybe Very Happy" by Jack Gilbert from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

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