Welcome back to The Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern, and today is

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020. Today's poem is by a German-born American poet named Liesel

Mueller. She lived from 1924 to 2020. She actually died about four days ago on February 21st. She has a fascinating

story, which I'll tell you a little bit about in a little while after I read the poem

for the first time. But I will tell you now that she received awards, including the National

Book Award in 1981 for poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, and is the only

German-born poet who has awarded that particular prize.

She also won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Lamont Poetry Prize,

and is quite a well-respected poet in the poetry world.

And I was reminded of this particular poem called Monet Refuses the Operation.

I was reminded of it after she died on Twitter,

where someone posted that this is one of their favorite poems by Lisa Mueller.

So I wanted to share this with you,

and then as usual, offer a few thoughts.

So here it is.

Monet refuses the operation.

Doctor, you say there are no halos around the streetlights in Paris,

and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels.

To soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I call the horizon does not exist and sky and water so long apart

are the same state of being.

...