Spy Poetry: What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Editor’s Note: Every once in a while, amidst all the distracting minutiae that fill our days, something calls us to stop and pay attention, to take in the sheer immensity and fullness of being alive and for that to be enough. I have always loved this poem, and so, apparently, does Padraig O Tuama, the Irish poet and host of the weekly Poetry Unbound podcast, who has the line “This is what the living do” engraved on his pen. This poem was written to Howe’s brother, John, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1989.

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York. She worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Howe is the author of New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024), which received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry this month. She is also author of Magdalene (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W. W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; What the Living Do (W. W. Norton, 1998); and The Good Thief (Persea Books, 1988), which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. In 1995, she coedited the anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (Persea, 1995). A former poet laureate of New York State, she is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and poet-in-residence at The Cathedral of St John the Divine. Her poem, “What the Living Do” is excerpted from What the Living Do (Copyright 1998 Marie Howe) and used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., and the author. All rights reserved.