Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) is a prolific African American author of twelve poetry books and lots of other stuff. Associated with the Black Arts Movement. I read a short meditation on life and love because I feel like that today:
Personal Letter No. 3
nothing will keep
us young you know
not young men or
women who spin
their youth on
cool playing sounds.
we are what we
are what we never
think we are.
no more wild geo
graphies of the
flesh. echoes. that
we move in tune
to slower smells.
it is a hard thing
to admit that
sometimes after midnight
i am tired
of it all.
A universal theme. The poem itself reads like a cool breeze, playful with language, short dynamic lines, it’s no elegy dragging us down in sorrow and bleakness. We are ex-centric, we no longer coincide with what we think we are. Our bodies are echoes, memories of the time we explored their geographies wildly. The slowing down of time is expressed in a sense that is the most timeless: the olfactory. Slower smells, I like that.
Sometimes after midnight she is tired of life. Sleepless she lies in his arms, and she has enough of it. Her longing doesn’t make sense anymore, why? Because she has lost access to who she is?
One thought on “Reading: Personal Letter No. 3 by Sonia Sanchez”
Comments are closed.