60 for 60: Portrait of the Poet as Augustus Egg

By Zachary Erickson

“I am tired of women who are sad. I am tired of / Men who are tired.” The end of April is a good time to be finished with feeling sad and tired. It’s springtime; the earth is singing; it’s still National Poetry Month. I’ve never seen the Thames, but I know it mythically, as all rivers are known.

Lucie Brock-Broido was, in former days, the Director of Poetry in our own Writing program. I never met her, but, in my time at Columbia, I’ve met an astonishing parade of her former students (many of them current professors) who swear by her as their friend and spiritual mother. I am delighted to see that Columbia Journal published this short poem in 2001. Such is a poet’s immortality to readers. When we “pray for peace of mind, and then / Complain,” may we do so as gracefully as Lucie does here.


Portrait of the Poet as Augustus Egg

Lucie Brock-Broido

The last thing you will ever draw is an angel in black boots,
Floating heavenward on green and sinewed wings.
In the miserere, you will pray for peace of mind, and then
Complain. The moon is three-quarters full
Of night, as seen from the vaulted
Shadow of an Adelphi arch beside the River Thames.
I am tired of women who are sad. I am tired of
Men who are tired. You are unwholesome mantling
The water with an ochre light.