The Sin of Pride

John Koethe

1945 –

turns out not to be a sin at all, but in the guise

Of self-esteem a virtue; while poetry, an original

Sin of pride for making self-absorption seem heroic,

Apologizes again and shuts the door. O Small

Room of Myself, where everything and nothing fits,

I wish the night would last forever as the song assures,

Though it never does. I make my way not knowing

Where it leads or how it ends—in shocks of recognition,

In oblivion deferred, too little or too late, consumed

By fears of the forgotten and of the truly great. Morning

Brings a newspaper and an ordinary day, the prospect

Of a popular novel, though it’s hard to read. I write to live

And read to pass the time, yet in the end they’re equal,

And instead of someone else’s name the name I hear is mine—

Which is unsurprising, since our stories all sound alike,

With nothing to reveal or hide. How thin our books

Of revelations, the essential poems of everyone

Mysterious on the outside, but with nothing to conceal—

Like the stories of experience I go on telling myself

And sometimes even think are true, true at least to a feeling

I can’t define, though I know what I know: of a mind

Relentlessly faithful to itself and more or less real.

Poems