A poem by US poet Maggie Smith that tackles “how hard it is to love this world as it is, and to teach my kids to love it”, has gone viral in the wake of this week’s tragedies.
Smith, who has released three books of poetry with small presses and won the Independent Publisher book awards’ gold medal in poetry for her collection The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, published the poem, Good Bones, in the new issue of American literary journal Waxwing on Wednesday.
“Life is short, though I keep this from my children,” she writes. “Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible, and for every kind / stranger, there is one who would break you, / though I keep this from my children.”
The poem ends: “This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.”
Since it was published online on Wednesday, the poem has been shared thousands of times on social media by writers and celebrities from Caitlin Moran to Charlotte Church. “My Twitter is going haywire. Thank you for the kindness. I’m so surprised and moved that one short poem has meant something to so many people,” wrote Smith on Thursday.
One reader described the poem as “a timely, defiant thing”, while another called it “heartbreaking and perfect”, writing that “now, as ever, more than ever, we need poetry”.
Smith added on Facebook: “I am just flabbergasted. The poem Good Bones in Waxwing has gone legit viral via Twitter, particularly in the UK … I’m being retweeted in Welsh and French and other languages I can’t read.”
