A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford

A Ritual to Read to Each Other
by William Stafford

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider –
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give – yes or no, or maybe –-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

(In The Darkness around Us Is Deep)


This is one of my favorite Stafford poems. An inner stirring within me confirms its truth.

Patterns made by others prevail within me. Taking the tail of the elephant in front of me, I'm liable to get lost and miss the circus, or to follow the wrong god home and miss the star written with my own name.

So it is important to wake up -- awake people need to be awake. Sleeping through life, those familiar patterns prevail and I'll fail to recognize that my feet are only stepping where the elephants in front of me have gone.

I've spent enough years missing my star.