Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Curd.

Today's poem is by Morris Manning from his new book, Rail Splitter. I've read two of

Morris Manning's poems to you over the course of the last year or so. And this next one is another one

from, as I said, his collection, Real Splitter,

which is probably my favorite new collection of 2019. Can't recommend it highly enough. I really

love this collection and hope you head over to Amazon and pick a copy up. I've been telling

everyone I know to get a copy and spend some time with it. I think it'll be one that you go back

to. And this poem here is a good example of why.

It's called The Art of Poetry.

It goes like this.

Everything changes.

Even alone as I am in this strange eternity,

my mind is restless. And yet I also live with a kind of peace.

To say, I also live, even though I'm dead, is funny.

I have to humor myself down here, or up here, whatever adverb designates this realm.

Let's call it the realm of the voice and the mind.

And as the mind changes, so must the voice. But the voice eventually ceases to be distinct

and therefore becomes itself. I don't know how that happens. It just becomes a common voice,

a voice that anyone hearing it would know.

Ideally, the voice will say something worth saying, or better say something without having to say it.

Poetry speaks about the unspeakable.

It's a clanking wagon load of paradox pulled by a horse across a vast land in utter darkness,

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