The Wild Iris
by Louise Gluck
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
***
Louise Gluck is, in my estimation, one of the best poets out there. Now, this isn't my favorite of her poems, but it's probably her best-known. To me, the real kicker is right there in the second stanza: "Hear me out" sounds like she knows you're going to dismiss the poem as yet another bland discourse on death, and she's not letting you turn away. It's a great moment, and one of the strongest I can remember reading.
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