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A Rainy Country

Linda Pastan

Je suis commele roi d'un pays pluvieux - Baudelaire

The headlines and feature stories alike 

leak blood all over the breakfast table, 

the wounding of the world mingling

with smells of bacon and bread.

Small pains are merely anterooms for larger, 

and every shadow has a brother, just waiting.

Even grace is sullied by ancient angers. 

I must remember it has always been like this:

those Trojan women, learning their fates;

the simple sharpness of the guillotine. 

A filigree of cruelty adorns every culture.

I've thumbed through the pages of my life,

longing for childhood whose failures 

were merely personal, for all

the stations of love I passed through. 

Shadows and the shadow of shadows.

I am like the queen of a rainy country, 

powerless and grown old. Another morning

with its quaint obligations: newspaper, 

bacon grease, rattle of dishes and bones.

Most mornings when I get up I look at RSS feeds (one for tech, one for music, one for news), a couple of headlines and maybe a feature article, then I check my Facebook account and if I have time read a couple entertaining stories provided by the Internet Movie Database. 

I can't say it makes for a hopeful start to my day - about the best you can hope for is some light entertainment, maybe some good sarcasm and an insider tip on some new gadget I can lust after. The news is rarely good. So it's nice to hear someone frame it all with grace and biting wit, especially the fact that the news has never been good. 

A rabbi once said there will continue to be wars and rumors of wars. That's good news for the circulation desks of the AP and Gannett.