Tracy K. Smith

And suddenly, it's Friday, the last day of the work week. Time to read a poem we may not have heard before and ferret out its meaning.

Here’s a poem by Tracy K. Smith (born April 16, 1972), American poet and educator who served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019.

She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.

An Old Story

We were made to understand it would be
Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,
Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind.

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream.
The worst in us having taken over
And broken the rest utterly down.

A long age
Passed. When at last we knew how little
Would survive us—how little we had mended

Or built that was not now lost—something
Large and old awoke. And then our singing
Brought on a different manner of weather.

Then animals long believed gone crept down
From trees. We took new stock of one another.
We wept to be reminded of such color.

--Tracy K. Smith, "An Old Story" from Wade in the Water. Copyright © 2018 by Tracy K. Smith.