What, then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope, our acceptance of finite disappointment even as we adhere to infinite hope. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist, but the achievement found in Jeremiah’s words, “This is a grief, and I must bear it.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

I paint what I see.
Or maybe
I paint what I want to see.
It’s hard to tell the difference.
—Tim Crowder

She plunges her hands
in the basin of the moon
filled with bitter milk
and splashes her face
with fresh moonlight
as the night sky ripples
droplets of cool stars
—James Valvis

A Poetry East anthology of poetry by Michael Hettich, Connie Wanek, and Jody Bolz; translations by Enrique Barrero Rodriguez and Tomas Transomer; and art by Kevin Bauman, Tim Crowder, and Lucinda Luvaas.