The Obligation to Be Happy by Linda Pastan
The Obligation to Be Happy
Linda PastanIt is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.
MARGINALIA
Dear R., it just hit me: I am alone. I know I sent you a letter last Sunday, breaking the silence. A singularly bad idea, I remember saying. But that’s done. I wonder if you’re happy. If that’s worth leaving everything.
Yours,
T.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan by Linda Pastan, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
ABOUT LINDA PASTAN
Linda Pastan was born in the Bronx, New York, on May 27, 1932, to a Jewish family. She was raised in Armonk, in Westchester County. Pastan is the author of Almost an Elegy (W. W. Norton, 2022); Insomnia (W. W. Norton, 2015); Traveling Light (W. W. Norton, 2011); Queen of a Rainy Country (W. W. Norton, 2006); The Last Uncle (W. W. Norton, 2002); Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 (W. W. Norton, 1998), which was nominated for the National Book Award; An… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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