Mark Jarman

After the Massacre, to Make Love

After the massacre, to make love,
to lie on the morning paper, after the massacre
and after making love, and sing together
a song of Shakespeare’s.

After the horoscopes and the massacre,
to express our own defiance
and come away from death inoculated
for a day of dread.

To read the paper and to ask each other
what mourning to wear,
sitting side by side in bed, gazing
into the future.

Then turning to each other and to nakedness,
alive—alive in all likelihood for a long time,
more than long enough to make love,
to sing, after the massacre.

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Mark Jarman’s latest collection of poetry is Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems (Sarabande Books, 2011). He is the Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, TN. Sarabande Books will publish his next collection, The Heronry, in 2017.