How difficult it is! How strange to break in on the self on those sections of self that lie buried but so vulnerable that a footstep above them, on loose-packed detritus, hurts to the quick, and makes life of pain—that it lives— at all lives. So I have heard of one more— perhaps the first woman I knew as a woman— gone away, and now dead. We speak briefly of the dead, as if we no longer wanted to think of them, but their presence is none the less— living in some other place. We stay with them.
1 comment
How difficult it is!
How strange to break in
on the self on those sections
of self that lie buried
but so vulnerable
that a footstep above them,
on loose-packed detritus,
hurts to the quick,
and makes life of
pain—that it lives—
at all lives.
So I have heard of one more—
perhaps the first woman
I knew as a woman—
gone away, and now dead.
We speak briefly
of the dead,
as if we no longer wanted
to think of them,
but their presence is
none the less—
living in some other place.
We stay with them.
Theodore Enslin (1925-2011)
Post a Comment