De Amerikaanse dichteres Connie Wanek werd geboren op 1 juni 1952 in Madison, Wisconsin, en groeide op in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In 1989 verhuisde ze met haar gezin naar Duluth, Minnesota. Ze verdeelt nu haar tijd tussen Minnesota en New Mexico. Haar werk verscheen in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, en Missouri Review. Ze heeft vier dichtbundels gepubliceerd, één boek met kort proza, en was co-editor (met Joyce Sutphen en Thom Tammaro) van de uitgebreide historische bloemlezing van vrouwelijke dichters uit Minnesota, genaamd “To Sing Along the Way” (New Rivers Press, 2006). ). Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States (2004-2006), benoemde haar in 2006 tot Witter Bynner Fellow van de Library of Congress.
Monopoly
We used to play, long before we bought real houses.
A roll of the dice could send a girl to jail.
The money was pink, blue, gold, as well as green,
and we could own a whole railroad
or speculate in hotels where others dreaded staying:
the cost was extortionary.
At last one person would own everything,
every teaspoon in the dining car, every spike
driven into the planks by immigrants,
every crooked mayor.
But then, with only the clothes on our backs,
we ran outside, laughing.
After Us
I don’t know if we’re in the beginning
or in the final stage.
— Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones.
The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide.
We spoke of millions, of billions of years.
We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed. And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself.
