A poet speaks of refuge

 Charles Reznikoff lived in troubled times. He saw the mass movements of his day and wrote of smoke blowing through the streets, carried by strong, unpredictable winds. 

Against their hurly-burly

I shut the window of my mind,

and the world at the winds’ will,

find myself calm and still.

 

It’s a simple statement about the importance of having a place of refuge.

Reznikoff wrote poems that read like scripture to me. These lines were from Five Groups of Verse, which he published in 1927. He set the type by hand and made 375 copies.

• Sources: Poems 1918-1975, The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney; Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1996, Vol. 1, p. 73. There are many notes on the poet at this site, including “The case for Charles Reznikoff,” Dec. 10, 2022.