Elegy in Joy

Image by by Else Siegel from Pixabay

“Let us nourish beginnings” says Muriel Rukeyser, for “the seeds of all things are blest.” Still in the first month of this new year, many of us are contemplating, planning, and initiating new beginnings. We are planting seeds that will nourish us in the months and even years to come. As we do so, we’re bringing into these darkest, coldest days of winter the warm light of hope.

What seeds are you planting? Are they seeds that will grow better health? A more peaceful home life? A more successful career? A cleaner environment? A more just world? Whatever type of seeds you’ve chosen, be encouraged by Rukeyser’s insistence that they are blest.

Elegy in Joy [excerpt]

by Muriel Rukeyser (1913 - 1980)

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children: 
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.

From the anthology, Birds, Beasts, and Seas, edited by Jeffrey Yang (New Directions, 2011).