Poems by Nan Meneely

Picture from Somalia

​The eyes of a child 
who is starving to death 
have already died 
of expecting 
what never arrives.
They hold a knowing 
language cannot shape.
of what a wasting body tells.

How shall I write
of this beautiful boy
when all I have is words? 

I look for something
I could name as fear,
fear of death, perhaps. 
But his has been  
a dying every day, 
as natural to him 
as breathing in and out. 
I can’t see hopelessness
but maybe there was never
hope to lose. 
If there is grief for what is not, 
it can’t be named, 
but maybe there has never been
a plenty to regret. 
The rage that must be part
of what consumes him
hides. Perhaps it’s dammed 
behind the eyes gone dull
with brute monotony
of nothing to be done.

I can’t see in. I cannot look away.
I cannot look away although 
I’m sometimes hungry not to know. 


Writing the Unthinkable
The reporter gnaws his knuckle,
as she speaks. He tries 
to write a picture
of her children, boy and girl,
not old enough
to spell their names.
They stand on either side of her,
tee shirts worn so gauzy 
with their handing down
they don’t disguise
the sharp protrusion
of a shoulder bone.
Odd, he thinks, the boy,
the bigger child, leans
into her, encircles her 
with both his arms.
The girl is steady on her feet,
defies his sympathy
and gives no quarter
with her gaze.

His jottings fill a page:
covid riding visitors
into the houses huddling
cheek by jowl; 
barefaced brownstones
muffling tragedy as anger grows;
children escaping to spill
down stoops in search of play
forbidden many months;
soup kitchens running out of soup. 

He can’t do anything
to right the year
but write. It makes him cry 
but he will start his story
with the question 
she has thrust at him
at last:

“How do I choose
which child to feed today?”

Nan Meneely is a Connecticut poet whose career in teaching and training culminated in twenty years with the Federal Emergency Management Agency where she managed programs in support of disaster response and recovery. Her first publication, Letter from Italy, 1944, was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. Her second book, Simple Absence, published hours before the pandemic reached American shores, was nominated for the National Book Award.

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