A cento is a poem composed entirely of lines from other texts. It is a compression of long, varied conversations into a single moment of song. It is also a form that seems to offer a particular kind of opportunity for community. This cento, “We Sang Every Morning After Breakfast,” contains lines by writers who worked with longtime Kenyon Review editor Nancy Zafris, alongside others.
This song is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.
In a minute gone, and it’s in that moment of prayer
Like stars from the inside, I could go on forever.
My story is not important, but odd like horses lying down.
Let me not be destroyed. A museum of useless information
Suspended by the wide expanse of calculations in my head.
Seeking the light of anything to explain this long reign
Of the upside down. Get up when it’s still dark, landscape
Disappears like a promise that we are moving into.
We are each other’s magnitude and bond. I am a brick
in a house that is being built around your house. I am
Living. I remember you. A great wave that curls down and washes the air
And the street and the sidewalk with all those claimed things
Now belonging to another. You can get used to a lot if you’re willing.
Be a bird today. Barely grazing the land of heartache.
A single white feather by the river each morning.
At the end of my suffering was a door. And unnoticed in the corners
Was a silence that spread its dark wings and landed.
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only.
I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. A book
Long enough to find medicine and the bitterness of a different place
Forever making life beautiful. You just have to get through the night.
Our love is a rock against the wind. We have learned her different cries,
Learned them all. My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.
—selfsame and singular—sensible and singing I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—too?
Authors
Gail Galloway Adams, Margaret Atwood, Cheyenne Autry, Lorraine Baumgardner, Evan Brooke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marcia Butler, Christiane Buuck, Kate Lister Campbell, Shanti Chandrasekhar, Karin Cecile Davidson, Elizabeth DelConte, Anjanette Delgado, Emily Dickinson, Nicola Dixon, Meredith Doench, Cornelius Eady, Jennifer Genest, Gary Glass, Louise Glück, Adam Golub, Sascha Goluboff, David Greendonner, Trudy Hale, Bruce Hartzell, Christopher Hathaway, Rachel Heng, Marie Howe, J.D. Hosemann, Rebe Huntman, Lucy Ives, E.H. Jacobs, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Etheridge Knight, Alexandra Kontes, Elizabeth Lantz, Tara Lindis, Nancy Ludmerer, Emily Mirengoff, Katy Mullins, Pablo Neruda, Kristen Nichols, K.E. Ogden, Caleb Parker, Jenny Patton, Tonja Matney Reynolds, Janet Schneider, Mark Steinwachs, Sekou Sundiata, Charlie Watts, Cassie Wells, and C. D. Wright. Cento crafted by Cristina Correa.