Poem by Mary Oliver

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions,
soak in.

I don’t need to name the countries,
ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

My Poem: Mary, Mary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
No one reads papers anymore.
Not because they don’t exist,
but because we can’t stomach it.

I picture you saddened by news
of world events unfolding in
the sickening slow motion of
words frozen on the page in time.

And I wonder which is worse,
the descriptions of violence we
commit against each other on paper,
or the real-time videos on social media?

Oh, how you would hang your head
and weep at the morning “paper”,
such as it is today, malicious hate
unbearably wreaking havoc with impunity.

Oliver, Mary. A Thousand Mornings: Poems. Penguin Books, 2012.