My Favorite Poems

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• "The Obligation to Be Happy" by Linda Pastan Visit Linda Pastan's Page Read Poem

  It is more onerous
  than the rites of beauty
  or housework, harder than love.
  
  But you expect it of me casually,
  the way you expect the sun
  to come up, not in spite of rain
  or clouds but because of them.
  
  And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
  to sadness were a hidden vice—
  that downward tug on my mouth,
  my old suspicion that health
  and love are brief irrelevancies,
  no more than laughter in the warm dark
  strangled at dawn.
  
  Happiness.
  
  I try to hoist it
  on my narrow shoulders again—
  a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
  
  I stumble around the house,
  bump into things.
  
  Only Midas himself
  would understand.

• "The Obligation to Be Happy" by Linda Pastan Visit Linda Pastan's Page Read Poem

  It is more onerous
  than the rites of beauty
  or housework, harder than love.
  
  But you expect it of me casually,
  the way you expect the sun
  to come up, not in spite of rain
  or clouds but because of them.
  
  And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
  to sadness were a hidden vice—
  that downward tug on my mouth,
  my old suspicion that health
  and love are brief irrelevancies,
  no more than laughter in the warm dark
  strangled at dawn.
  
  Happiness.
  
  I try to hoist it
  on my narrow shoulders again—
  a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
  
  I stumble around the house,
  bump into things.
  
  Only Midas himself
  would understand.

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