I Am Learning to Abandon the World by Linda Pastan

I Am Learning to Abandon the World

by Linda Pastan

I am learning to abandon the world

before it can abandon me.

Already I have given up the moon

and snow, closing my shades

against the claims of white.

And the world has taken

my father, my friends.

I have given up melodic lines of hills,

moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.

And every night I give my body up

limb by limb, working upwards

across bone, towards the heart.

But morning comes with small

reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

A tree outside the window

which was simply shadow moments ago

takes back its branches twig

by leafy twig.

And as I take my body back

the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap

as if to make amends.

This beautiful poem, currently being posted all over the interwebs, was originally published in Poetry in September 1981 and also appears in Pastan's Linda Pastan, PM/AM: New and Selected Poems, published the following year (Norton).

There is not much to say here, because it is obvious why, at this point in human history, this poem is resonating with so many people. Things are awful in general, "out there" ways and, for many of us, in personal "right here in my own home and body" ways. Nighttimes are for abandoning our own physicality to sleep, but even the "perchance to dream" seems like an impossibility. Especially after the deaths of loved ones, for the speaker in this poem, it is the father and some friends, sleep does not come with comfort.

Thankfully, all is not hopeless.

But morning comes with small

reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

As with so many poems, the poet reminds us that the small, everyday things of this world are the important things. Coffee. Birds singing. A tree outside the bedroom window. The sun. It is not only the natural world, although that is always a reminder to have hope, but even coffee--the smell, the warmth, the taste. There is comfort in these things and in Spring--this seems very much a Spring poem, which is often a comfort providing a sense that things will work out.

Linda Pastan died in 2023. She won many awards for her poetry, which is often described as quiet. I do not know how she felt about that description, but I think it fits and to me it is a compliment (however, I think some people may have meant it as an insult--she did not write about trauma and war and BIG topics; I think this is patriarchal thinking and also tends to come from a narrow idea of what poems are and can do). Her poems tend to center around everyday life and its small moments, reminding us (again) that those small things are what makes a life. This may not be loud, but it is vital.

Susan Rich wrote about Pastan soon after her Pastan's death, and the piece has a lovely photo of the poet during a reading. You can read that here.