Seam

Reading Willa Cather in Bangladesh

63 Reading Willa Cather in Bangladesh There were again things which seemed destined for her . . . I would give it up: this heaviness built of neither silence nor snow. I am there, but here, back in Virginia, walking through shadows of leaves imprinted damp on gray sidewalks. I would look toward their soil-etched wings, and curl away from dim corners where shadows must be rubbed away from mirrors, where a TV might flicker with the figure of a woman dressed in green reading the news aloud from blue-inked pages. Daily, it is possible to forget. I would give it up: the commotion of wrought-iron windows looking out to fields of tea and rice, the failed light pouring through. I would turn from beggar hands pressed against glass, their hungry and open mouths. I would rather be here, pacing in a room papered with shadows of bare oak limbs, than there, sitting quietly in each dark room that holds its breath, waits for the hum of a generator to light its cement walls. ...