cambridge book review

Education

Elli Hazit

Your answers bewilder me
I’ve forgotten the method
and I am far too old for relearning
these equations, properties
Rules to live by
Advice cascades over the modern day
There’s a way to be better at everything
Better at living
Better at dying
Forgetting the role of chance and
leaving days unnamed,
unburdened by definition
In the throes of real pain
the moment renders itself, by itself
An existence
that will flame out
Comfort exacts desire, leisure,
the luxury of the first world
Every corner holds secrets
that are irrelevant
Or hard fought knowledge
gathered in quiet desk days
Half-remembered facts, connections,
imagined situations
History repeats itself, it’s said
Man-made, why not?
Can this be a soul
that crawled out?
Warmed, lighted, fed, and launched
into the fray, the forest, the field
Distinct from the meal
first served, then made
No rewinding, only memory
complicated, cheap memory
to bolster the feel of experience

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Elli Hazit was born in San Francisco in 1960. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master’s degree from Boston University. Hazit lived in Paris, France from 1983 to 1997. Her writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Cambridge News. She has also produced radio programs for WORT-FM, Madison. One of her stories, “The Tangerines and the Dogs,” was broadcast internationally on the BBC World Service Programme.

June 15, 2011 Posted by | poetry | , , | 1 Comment