Crazy Poem by Art Rosch

If you have asked yourself the question
“why am I so crazy”?
the answer is simple.
You are crazy with grief.
Deep down inside,
you are like one attending a funeral,
tearing your clothes,
bewailing your loss.
“But what have I lost, to be so crazy? ”
you ask.
Something infinitely precious,
something you love so ferociously
that even to remember it consciously
would set you to rending your hair,
again and again.
There is a rage that attends this grief
a rage at yourself, because,
down in this same forgotten chamber of memory,
you know that you were offered this precious thing
beyond value, and you lost it,
from a moment’s inattention,
or cast it aside for something more glamorous,
or ignored it because it did not make
pretty jingling music
the way a child’s toy does.
The world is a child’s toy
compared to the majesty of that
which we have put away,
and now, unconsciously,
we grieve, and wonder
why we are so crazy.


(2001)