Thank You
Ross Gay (b. 1974)
If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.
(2006)
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1 Thessalonians 5:14-18 (NIV)
And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
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Ross Gay is a poet and academic who teaches creative writing and literature at Indiana University and Drew University. His recent collection of essays, The Book of Delights (2019), brought me a great deal of joy in the months just after lockdown in Singapore, with each piece functioning as a journal-type entry cataloguing a moment of delight or elation that Gay felt in a specific day. This undercurrent of joyfulness runs throughout his work, such as in his award-winning poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015), a humming commitment to the question of how, as he describes, ‘we attend to the ways that we make each other possible.’
‘Thank You’, taken from his first collection Against Which (2006), is a stunning example of this. In place of anger, frustration, violence, or vindictiveness, it insists on attentiveness, awe, and gratitude. It is atmospheric and evocative, particularly as a poem written in the conditional and the second person, addressing a ‘you’ that is ‘half naked / and barefoot in the frosty grass’, reminded of the ephemerality of being ‘the air of the now and gone’ and the voice of the earth that ‘says all that you love will turn to dust’. This recognition of our transitory existence is one to be met not with the raising of ‘your fist’ or your ‘small voice’, nor with the act of taking ‘cover’.
The turn in the poem is seamless, syllogistic. The speaker continues with a litany of quick, sensory delights, brief moments of great pleasure: the tactility of curling ‘your toes into the grass’, the visibility of evaporated breath as a ‘cloud / ascending from your lips’, and the deliberateness of walking through ‘the garden’s dormant splendor’. Gay’s poem is one that sees despair and brings it to rest, quiet before the calm of gratitude. It reminds me of the scriptural injunction of 1 Thessalonians to ‘give thanks in all circumstances’, a corollary of doing ‘what is good for each other and for everyone else.’ Most reassuringly, this is done because ‘this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’
What brings us back to a place of gratitude?
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© 2006 Ross Gay