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Published: Sun Jul 1 2012
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
My Apology from the World

We’re sorry for ignoring you for so long
and so consistently

We’re sorry for misunderstanding
your best intentions,

whatever they were
Certainly you never

consciously sought to do harm
although sometimes

it spilled in all directions

We’re sorry you couldn’t keep up
with our map of consequences,

sorry that we made you wait
so long

you had to imagine this
the way you imagined everything—

being cherished and knowing why
being happy and knowing how

You never knew what you were doing
We’re sorry for that too

Stan Sanvel Rubin is the author of four poetry collections, most recently There. Here. (Lost Horse Press, 2013) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street, 2006), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize. His work has appeared in such magazines as The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, AGNIPoetry Northwest, and Shanghai Literary Review. He received the 2018 Vi Gale Award from Hubbub. With his late wife, Judith Kitchen, he co-founded and for a decade directed the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. He lives on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and writes essay-reviews of poetry for Water-Stone Review. (updated 4/2019)

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