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I will praise your plain songs
by Sarah Ruhl

I will praise your plain songs.
I will praise your plant songs.
You will give me weeds
and distraught calendars.

I will praise you for the things you choose:
the color of your shirts.
I will praise you for unchosen things:
the contour of your chin.

You will give me subscriptions, brevity,
towers of flat, sweet grass.
You will give me pointed flower arrangements.

When summer flags and ships slow
and I am tired of waiting, tired of praising
bits and pieces, thumbs and drawers—anatomy—
then I will praise you without purpose,
your empty hands, your hollow ear...

When your nothing things are incomplete
(when your nothing is complete)
the work of conspiring solitudes—
I will praise your nothing best and most of all,
I will praise you in the smallest, saddest words:
so, then, to, cup, go.

"I will praise your plain songs," by Sarah Ruhl, from 44 POEMS FOR YOU by Sarah Ruhl, copyright © 2020 Copper Canyon Press. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press.