What I Understood
What I Understood
by Katha Pollitt
When I was a child I understood everything
about, for example, futility. Standing for hours
on the hot asphalt outfield, trudging for balls
I’d ask myself, how many times will I have to perform
this pointless task, and all the others? I knew
about snobbery, too, and cruelty—for children
are snobbish and cruel—and loneliness: in restaurants
the dignity and shame of solitary diners
disabled me, and when my grandmother
screamed at me, “Someday you’ll know what it’s like!”
I knew she was right, the way I knew
about the single rooms my teachers went home to,
the pictures on the dresser, the hoard of chocolates,
and that there was no God, and that I would die.
All this I understood, no one needed to tell me.
the only thing I didn’t understand
was how in a world whose predominant characteristics
are futility, cruelty, loneliness, disappointment
people are saved every day
by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grassblade, a tablecloth.
This year I’ll be
thirty-nine, and I still don’t understand it.
Very fine. The smallest, oddest, yet most singular things can offer salvation to those who desperately yearn for it, as the poet has, for reliving the well-catelogued painful details of the poem.
There are some interesting insights in this piece. I’m sure a lot of people can commiserate. I sure the hell can. I particularly enjoyed part of the one line which read “no one needed to tell me.”
Although, I think I would also say that things are not always shitty. Your poem communicates this as well in “people are saved everyday / by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grass blade, a table cloth”.