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Here Now
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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like a parable, where every word is simple, but how does this one go with the one before, the next . . . Here Now The sky is the same changing colors as the farthest snow. The tall pines float like candles with the current, next to the stream clear with brown leaves. A pitched ceiling, two cots; apple petals; the thin smell of woodsmoke, wood, turpentine . . . My sister, I, who we were then— Downstairs, the grown world bent to its books; low flames, low voices. Sleeplessness . . . Our wooden room —The white cloth on the table between us Forty years, a breath . . . our tall daughters circle like birds, in our light houses, bump into things Their high words, leaving out their lives Quiet-minded, a lightness, this morning; the piece of sea glass next to the window, almost amber, curved like a thumb, a petal 132 door in the mountain The sky is the same changing blue, and green, as the burning snow. So much must be asleep under this white quiet, sleep, sleep, low voices, dust hair, under the eyes the impossible compass fingers of the god. The Forgiveness Dream: Man from the Warsaw Ghetto He looked about six or seven, only much too thin. It seemed right he would be there, but everything, every lineation, was slow . . . He was speaking in Polish, I couldn’t answer him. He pointed at the window, the trees, or the snow, or our silver auditorium. I said to him in English, “I’ve lived the whole time here, in peace. A private life.” “In shame,” I said. He nodded. He was old now, kind, my age, or my mother’s age: He nodded, and wrote in my notebook—“Let it be good.” He frowned, and stopped, as if he’d forgotten something, and wrote again, “Let it.” I walk, and stop, and walk— touch the birch bark shining, powdery, cold: taste the snow, hot on my tongue— pure cold, licked from the salt of my hand: the messenger 133 ...