Now I Get It

Fanny Howe

Remember judge and you shall
Be judged
For laughing in school, for being
Stupid and always wrong.
Penance like the scent of the sheep
Is slow O’ weary, its coat
A kind of fluff that goes up
In filament theory.
Your own life ahead follows you
Like a scientist posing as a shepherd.

About This Poem

“This is a brief meditation on the way we believe we have escaped our negative acts, until later, when we realize much of our life has been a kind of penance for those acts. Science believes it has the answers to such personal mysteries, but I wonder.”

–Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe is the author of Second Childhood (Graywolf Press, 2014). She will be teaching at Brown University in the fall of 2014.

Most Recent Book by Howe

Second Childhood

(Graywolf Press, 2014)

"My Childhood Home I See Again" by Abraham Lincoln

"The Answer" by Sara Teasdale

"Days of Me" by Stewart Dischell

Poem-a-Day

Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.

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August 27, 2014