When I am Asked (Lisel Mueller)

When I am asked   

how I began writing poems,   

I talk about the indifference of nature.   

It was soon after my mother died,   

a brilliant June day,   

everything blooming.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

in a lovingly planted garden,   

but the day lilies were as deaf   

as the ears of drunken sleepers   

and the roses curved inward.   

Nothing was black or broken   

and not a leaf fell   

and the sun blared endless commercials   

for summer holidays.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

ringed with the ingenue faces   

of pink and white impatiens   

and placed my grief   

in the mouth of language,   

the only thing that would grieve with me.