Diary

by Maxine Chemoff

It’s hard to believe one can write a poem, paint a
canvas, cultivate a garden with all the ugliness out
there. Bombs torture the sky over Ukraine. Mothers
and babies perish of hunger. You’d think this
boiling brew of chaos and capitulation could yield
no more than millions of replicas of Guernica or
The Scream, an Andy Warhol torture display. You
might imagine there is a reversal coming, when
the poem asserts that words will heal, paintings
glitter, roses bloom—but no. It is the scene at the
watering hole when the herd of wildebeest meet
their doom. Nowhere to hide, no tiny oases of
peace except in our minds several moments a day:
the denial, the necessary denial.