after Levchev
“It seems to be the five stages
of yeast, not grief,
you like to write about,”
my son says,
meaning that bread
is always rising
and falling, being broken
and eaten, in my poems.
And though he is only half serious,
I want to say to him
“bread rising in the bowl
is like breath rising in the body;”
or “if you knead the dough
with perfect tenderness,
it is like gently kneading flesh
when you make love.”
Baguette . . . pita . . . pane . . .
Challah . . . naan: bread is
the universal language, translatable
on the famished tongue.
Now it is time to open
the package of yeast
and moisten it with water,
watching for its fizz,
its blind energy–proofing
it’s called, the animate proof
of life. Everything
is ready: salt, flour, oil.
Breadcrumbs are what lead
the children home.
First published in Ploughshares, now in Traveling Light, W.W. Norton, 2011.
Linda Pastan has published 13 volumes of poetry, most recently Traveling Light. Two of these books have been finalists for the National Book Award. Pastan’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Georgia Review. She has been Poet Laureate of Maryland, and in 2003 she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement.
This poem was contributed by our Poetry Editor, Christina Daub.
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August 14, 2011
“…If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go. ”
from Stepping Westward
by Denise Levertov