“In the Village,” by James Longenbach

“In the Village,” a poem by faculty member James Longenbach, was recently featured in Poetry Daily. Read an excerpt below:

In the Village

                  1.

Shortly before I died,
Or possibly after,
I moved to a small village by the sea.

You’ll recognize it, as did I, because I’ve written
About this village before.
The rocky sliver of land, the little houses where the fishermen once lived—

We had everything we needed: a couple of rooms
Overlooking the harbor,
A small collection of books,
Paperbacks, the pages
Brittle with age.

How, if I’d never seen
The village, had I pictured it so accurately?
How did I know we’d be happy there,
Happier than ever before?

The books reminded me of what,
In our youth,
We called literature.

Read the poem in its entirety here: https://poems.com/poem/in-the-village/