The part of life
devoted to contemplation
was at odds with the part
committed to action…
Life, my sister said,
is like a torch passed now
from the body to the mind.
Sadly, she went on, the mind is not
there to receive it.
— Louise Glück, from “Autumn” in “Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 26, 2021)
Portrait: Louise Gluck via The Atlantic