Louise Gluck Poems

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
...

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
...

I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
...

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was--
...

I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
Look like pigs.
...

A man and a woman lie on a white bed.
It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
...

How can you say
earth should give me joy? Each thing
born is my burden; I cannot succeed
with all of you.
...

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
...

My mother's an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babies--these
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say
...

No one's despair is like my despair--

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
...