“In Shadow, Who Made These Words,” a Poem by Bianca Stone
From the Collection The Near and Distant World
“All poets are liars,” my play begins.
Plato was probably right. With this enfeebled mind
my only recourse is poetry.
Behind my head, heads begin to nod.
They doze in the surgical amphitheater behind my eyes.
I do not know what I hold more clearly in my mind:
the pain of what I had
or the pleasure in what I don’t.
In the afterlyric of childhood
you can barely stand to look back
without laughing
at how calmly desire and memory
see fit to destroy everything.
And thank God!
Let me be run through
with the wooden javelin of truth.
Let them remove my breastplate and grille
and wipe the mud from my brow.
Let them place a rose in my hand
and mutter that old prayer
and wave two fingers over me.
Let my only work be this,
to stare back
into the blue iris of the sky.
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Excerpted from The Near and Distant World Bianca Stone. Copyright © 2026 Bianca Stone. Published with permission from Tin House, an imprint of Zando, LLC.
Bianca Stone
Bianca Stone is a Vermont-based poet and scholar currently serving as Vermont’s poet laureate. Stone is the author of over many books, including the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite which received the 2022 Vermont Book Award and The Near and Distant World, out from Tin House in 2026. Her poetry and writings have appeared widely in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation and the Best American Poetry series. In 2013 she co-founded the poetry-based nonprofit, Ruth Stone House, where she organizes events and retreats, teaches classes on poetry and poetic study, hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast.
