Why Are Your Poems So Dark?Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?
And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished
without the dark stain
of alphabets?
When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.
Instead he invented
ebony and crows
and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.
Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"
Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.
--Linda Pastan, from Poetry (August 2001)
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