Carolyn Forché is a poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate. As an observer of the unfolding civil war in El Salvador, she gave expression to her experiences in The Country between Us and also edited the groundbreaking anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. She is celebrated as a champion of the human spirit and its ability to overcome atrocity, as evidenced in works such as The Angel of History. Other collections include Blue Hour and In the Lateness of the World.

Photography by Don J. Usner.

The Recording Angel

by Carolyn Forché

IV

The child asks about earth
The earth is a school. It is a waiting room, a foyer giving onto emptiness
It is for desires, small but beautifully done
The earth is wrapped in weather, and the weather in risen words
The child is awake, singing to himself, speaking in a language ending with the word
    night

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