CATHERINE ESPOSITO PRESCOTT on

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
The Guest House
 
                                             Translated by Coleman Barks
 
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
 
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as
an unexpected visitor.
 
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for
some new delight.
 
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet
​them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
 
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
 
 

Catherine Esposito Prescott’s poetry collection, Accidental Garden, won Gunpowder Press’s 2022 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize (selected by Danusha Laméris) and is forthcoming in 2023. She is also is the author of two chapbooks, Maria Sings (dancing girl press, 2017) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review Online, MER VOX, Mezzo Cammin, NELLE, Northwest Review, Pleiades, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and West Trestle Review. Her second full-length collection, How We Disappear (formerly titled We Were Never Here and My Sweet Atlantis), was a finalist for Michigan State University’s Wheelbarrow Books Prize, The St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press), and the Texas Review Press Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection competition (The Word Works). Prescott earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from New York University.