The Obligation to Be Happy by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan

The Obligation to Be Happy by Linda Pastan

T.

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Dear R., it just hit me: I

am

alone. I know I sent you a letter last Sunday, breaking the silence. A singularly bad idea, I remember saying. But that’s done. I wonder if you’re happy. If that’s worth leaving everything.

Yours,

T.

The Obligation to Be Happy

Linda Pastan

It is more onerous

than the rites of beauty

or housework, harder than love.

But you expect it of me casually,

the way you expect the sun

to come up, not in spite of rain

or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity

to sadness were a hidden vice—

that downward tug on my mouth,

my old suspicion that health

and love are brief irrelevancies,

no more than laughter in the warm dark

strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it

on my narrow shoulders again—

a knapsack heavy with gold coins.

I stumble around the house,

bump into things.

Only Midas himself

would understand.

—

This is from Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan, published by W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.

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