I S S U E  9

Shane McCrae

Whose Bliss Whose Blessedness

In Heaven would I know and be
       Indifferent     him who first enslaved my
Ancestors would I know his face
       If he was probably was saved I

Assume he was      believed the same
       As everyone his neighbors did
As everyone he knew excepting
       Those chained below some chained      to the dead

For days above whom did he kneel
       The dead and living      both if he
Knelt then he knelt above the dead and
       Living      and prayed his poetry

And ordinary prayers      and did
       Those chained hear      his knees strike the deck
If probably he knelt above them
       The living chained      to the dead in the dark

If he believed what everyone
       He knew believed they      might have they
Who lay beneath his knees      they might
       Have heard him kneeling on the sky

A Summer Day Is Cool and Bright

When I was young and sat with friends
I hardly knew      had just then met
Was young for thirty years I sat
But nearing      fifty who pretends

Or loves for nothing      how at forty
-Seven to make new friends if how to
Meet people I’ve known      online now two
Decades known almost if      in the morning

A summer day is cool and bright
Estranging heat will follow      though
Once in the same heat how      natural to
Love everybody burned by it

Shane McCrae lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. His book Sometimes I Never Suffered (Corsair, 2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and his pamphlet Hex and Other Poems (Bad Betty, 2022) won the 2022 Michael Marks Poetry Award.