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Sponge
Soul like a dirty sponge that soaked up all the dark bits
from yours all messed up and mixed in
with the dirt of the days the old hairs and hatefulness
Oh my god I knew there was hate in the human world
but I didn’t know it was the job of my soul
to clean it up How can I clean it up if my soul
is the sponge sponging it up In the end it doesn’t
go anywhere except into my dirtier and dirtier soul
And I say well crying will clean it up but then I’m
bent over crying because my beautiful sponge of a soul
that lay in the depths of a cool warm aquablue tropical
sea with little fishes flitting about in their exquisite
jewel colors and rays of sunshine raying through
has been used to sop up an angry man’s leftover
cruelty Yes cruel does sound like jewel and there
should be a jewelty How can I squeeze it out I’ll
need a new sponge but I can’t throw out my soul and if
each tear is one drop of an aquablue tropical sea
maybe I can cry back my sea It’s not so easy
to clean a soul some say weeks and some say centuries
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Sarah Arvio’s new book of poems is Cry Back My Sea (2021), which has been called “an ode to love.” Earlier books are Visits from the Seventh (2002), Sono: Cantos (2006), and night thoughts: 70 poems & notes from an analysis (2013), which is a hybrid of poetry, essay, and memoir. Her translation of poems and a play by Federico García Lorca, Poet in Spain (Knopf, 2017) has been received to wide acclaim. Among her honors are the Rome Prize and fellowships from the Bogliasco and Guggenheim foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. Poems have appeared in such places as Poetry, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Boston Review, as well as in many anthologies, including two editions of The Best American Poetry. A poem from Poet in Spain appears this winter in 100 Poems That Matter, curated by the Academy of American Poets. Arvio worked for many years as a conference translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland. A graduate of the Columbia School of the Arts and a lifelong New Yorker, she now teaches poetry and literary translation.
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Author: Terence Winch
