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Someday, we will be able to take it in, that violence, hold it in our hands . . . And the ones who come after us, maybe they can understand us; forgive us; as we do forgive our parents, our grandparents, moving so distantly through their lives . . . their silences . . . And the ones we were with maybe our friendship can change, can mend . . . Come stay here. Things change . . . She stays home; Not to invade Wait, here, in the quiet Lines from a Story I remembered . . . [my grandfather] said that if you let your blood run, you make yourself better. If there are spirits in you that want to go, they will leave with the blood. —An Eskimo woman, to Robert Coles Mother your quiet face already at eight years old a survivor’s face: You say there is no mother or father, say, fear, It is too cold here, you say, I am alive, I will hold myself in my own hands. The white beach in that photograph, white lake, white sky, a page . . . your story that I know in such spent outlines . . . But still your hands hold me to you, here, the messenger 159 your voice reads to me, still, —your voice that forgot itself in other people’s words— You never thought you knew things. And I have begun, so late, to trust what I love! To hope to gather in the rest. Or let it go: I cut my arm, it bled; a long dawn opening to here: in my own hands in the quiet listening —I send this page to you, from memory: lines from a story, about two friends who lived in distant towns: “—If I could talk to you now, I believe we could be so simple, if you could talk to me, then we could be so still.” March 21st Out of 92 natural elements, we could never have predicted man. We could never even get to the wetness of water, the miracle of ordinary water. Water is one of the strangest substances in all of chemistry. —George Wald 5 a.m. Waking. Something, dry, without shape, moving toward the tilted faces, the voices, of the dream, 160 door in the mountain ...

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