The people I want most to like all do it.
I listen to their talk of swifts and tits,
warblers and sparrows, cranes and jays and gannets
cuckoos, grebes, and larks, waxwings, kinglets;
their tales of crouching, waiting, all their dense
conversations mostly made of silence.
The stories they like best, the ones they tell
and retell, are of failure: the common yellow-
throat whose scratchy song scared off the rare
woodcock, the white-tailed kite always elsewhere.
Truth is, I find it dull, and I despise
myself for that. How is it they can prize
so highly what’s not there, shape their lives
to welcome something that never arrives?
What grace is theirs, to know what silence means,
and see because of things they have not seen?
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
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