Maya Angelou

Wonder

Wonder - meaning Summary

Mortality and Smallness

The poem contrasts a vivid present—"a day drunk with the nectar of nowness"—with the inevitable descent into night and oblivion. It frames human life as fleeting and asks whether poetry can alter that fate: will the speaker be less dead for writing, or the reader more alive for reading later? The tone is meditative and skeptical, probing art’s limits against mortality and time.

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A day drunk with the nectar of nowness weaves its way between the years to find itself at the flophouse of night to sleep and be seen no more. Will I be less dead because I wrote this poem or you more because you read it long years hence.

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