Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
Jack Gilbert
Meanwhile
by Jack Gilbert
A Brief For The Defense
by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Fourteen Lines 
Jack Gilbert is on a list of poets I mean to check out. Thanks for these poems. Accepting “gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world” was never more relevant or meant as much as it does these days. Q: on the 6th line of “Meanwhile,” are the words “sing light” supposed to be “sun light”? Typo?
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Thank you for sharing. According to Poetry Foundation, the version of Meanwhile I have posted is correct. I have often found that what that one of poetry’s blessings is it forces to not anticipate what we think the image should be, but to live in the moment with the poet and let them take us someplace unexpected. Given the gravity of the world’s troubles at the moment, Gilbert opens a door not just to what you expected – sunlight, but to sing light in the sun light as well.
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Poetry sleuth reporting for duty: I have found two reliable web sites that publish the poem “Meanwhile” and show that the words are “single light.” Granta appears to be where the poem was first published (maybe).
https://granta.com/two-poems-gilbert/
https://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=2&poet=882&poem=9479
“Single light” works better metrically and alliteratively than either of our “versions.” In any event, your defense of Poetry Foundation’s apparent error is admirable! Thanks once again.
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I will honor your hard work and change it…
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