Upon being born: Pulitzer Prize winning lines from Tracy K. Smith

….

Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes,
Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space.
Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father,
Or swallow us like a furnance. I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long. What teases us with blessings,
Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great
Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor,
To sweep our short lives clean. How mean
Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle.
The neighbor chopping onions through a wall.
All of it just a hiccough against what may never
Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it,
Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something
They have no name for has begun to insist
Upon being born.

— from “The Universe As Primal Scream” by Tracy K. Smith

in her collection of poems, Life On Mars,

which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, today,

her birthday.

(To watch and hear Smith reading these lines of hers, click here.)