Expressing Grief Through Words, Poetry/Lisel Mueller Poem When I Am Asked

Poem of the Day: When I Am Asked
BY LISEL MUELLER
When I am asked  
how I began writing poems,  
I talk about the indifference of nature.  

It was soon after my mother died,  
a brilliant June day,  
everything blooming.  

I sat on a gray stone bench  
in a lovingly planted garden,  
but the day lilies were as deaf  
as the ears of drunken sleepers  
and the roses curved inward.  
Nothing was black or broken  
and not a leaf fell  
and the sun blared endless commercials  
for summer holidays.  

I sat on a gray stone bench  
ringed with the ingenue faces  
of pink and white impatiens  
and placed my grief  
in the mouth of language,  
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Lisel Mueller, "When I am Asked" from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller.  Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

Source: Poetry (October 1987).