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Linda Pastan recently won the 2003 Ruth Lilly Prize presented by The Poetry Foundation. Her eleventh collection of poems, The Last Uncle, was published by Norton in 2002.

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Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
by Linda Pastan

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

 
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