The Gift- Poetic Inspiration by John Ciardi

The Gift

In 1943, when the keepers cried kaput,

Josef Stein, poet, came out of Dachau

like half a resurrection, his other

eighty pounds still in their invisible grave.

Slowly then the mouth opened and first

a broth, and then a medication, and then

a diet, and all in time and the knitting mercies,

the showing bones were buried back in flesh,

and the miracle was finished. Josef Stein,

man and poet, rose, walked, and could even

beget, and did, and died later of other causes

only partly traceable to his first death.

He noted – with some surprise at first ­

that strangers could not tell he had died once.

He returned to his post in the library, drank his beer,

published three poems in a French magazine,

and was very kind to the son who at lasy was his.

In the spent of one night he wrote three propositions:

That Hell is the denial of the ordinary. That nothing lasts.

That clean white paper waiting under a pen

is the gift beyond history and hurt and heaven.