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Barbara Einzig
. . . Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost. In every century did it seem that the ones before were surrounded by more space, or silence, or peace? Did people always count this way, thinking of the years as clusters of hundreds, sheaves of grain? I was sitting in the field. I was sitting in the field, counting on
my fingers, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten. He goes swimming slowly on, wheels and descends, but I perceive it
only by a wind upon my face and from below. It was my daughter who discovered the path through the thicket of wild
roses, planted recently, since we desire the native. The planting goes
from the end of the esplanade to the edge of the river, where there is
a clearing. Following it we were scratched, on her arms and my legs,
the heights at which we wander about. It is summer, hot, bees surround
the pink flowers, so open they lose their petals. Theirs is a stubborn
pollen, reminding me of what is mental. The Hudson is bright blue, thick
in the sun, the water a poster paint and the boats plying the river,
the way Whitman described them. Then he set out, and I followed after him. I felt myself begin to lose the numbness. For the first few days after
I began to rediscover my sensations, people had eyes, eyes in their heads,
and they were looking at me, and looking all around them, and they were
barely able to contain the curiosity they felt at being here, as I did.
I felt that I was one of them, one of the surprised. "By your words you have made me so eager to come with you that
I have returned to my first resolve." We are living on fill over the mariners' graveyard, men or perhaps some
women, lost at sea, the Potter's Field. Fill came from the excavation
of the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers, they dug the dirt out and
dumped it in the river, and over the old bones. And when they built Washington
Square there were many bones, whole skeletons, so it is not true that
you disappear here without a trace. And I, my head circled with error, said, "Master, what is this I hear? And what people are these who seem so overcome by pain?"
. . . and I fell like one who is seized by sleep. I saw a ship come sailing sailing on the sea and it was deeply laden with pretty things for thee
Fragments in italic are from Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, Charles Singleton, trans.
Barbara Einzig's most recent book of prose poetry is Grasping at Straws. She has also published Distance Without Distance (Kelsey Street Press), a series of miniature epics. |