and learn again to begin
oh something different
from repetition

Let's go to the morning
and watch the sun smudge

every bankrupt idea
of nature "you can't write about

anymore" said my friend
the photographer "except

as science"
Let's enroll ourselves

in the school of the sky
where knowing

how to know
and unknow is everything

we'll come to know
under what they once thought

was the dome of the world


About this poem
"A lot of sunrises, conversations with friends, books and romantic poets probably lie behind this poem, which chimes with something Beckett wrote: 'The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.' Also, here, and throughout the book, this poem comes from a desire to resist apocalyptic anxiety without denying 'reality.'"
-Maureen McLane

About Maureen McLane
Maureen N. McLane is the author of "Mz N: the serial: A Poem-in-Episodes" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). She teaches at New York University and lives in Manhattan.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2016 Maureen McLane. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate