Читать книгу Splitting an Order - Ted Kooser - Страница 14

Bad News

Because it arrives while you sleep,

it’s the one call you never pick up

on the first ring. In that pause between

the fourth and what would be the fifth,

in the flare of a lamp you’ve snapped on,

there it is, having waited all night

until it was time to awaken you,

shaping its sentence over and over,

simple old words you lean into

as into a breath from a cave.

And once the news is out, thrown over

your shoulders like a threadbare robe,

you move on cold feet room to room,

feeling as weightless as a soul,

turning on every light in the house,

needing the light all around you

because it’s a new day now, though still

in darkness, hours before dawn,

a day you’ll learn to call that day,

the first morning after it happened.