Stephen, this is exquisite.
Judy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 11:54 AM
Subject: Snap - Vincent
> On Elegy
>
> It's odd to engage elegy as a passion and, yet, so it comes to one with the
> passing of a father, any family member or close friend. A passion that does
> not come for a passing moment, but enshrines itself, a quilt work of
> stitched moments - appearances and disappearances - as the ghost of the
> absent appoints itself as a member of our days, including, most forcefully,
> one's dreams at night, but, then again, as a presence on the street, in the
> countryside, or on the waters in the days and months that follow.
> Neither is this a benign appearance - but, perhaps - more like something of
> an argument. The beloved refuses an amputation, one in which we are allowed
> to quickly forget, erase everything except a monument that one erects upon a
> ground or, say, as a poem or an obituary that free us from any further
> intrusion into our lives.
> No, at least for those of us who choose to remain open, as I suggest -
> wittingly or not - we must to these places where one finds him or herself at
> what one can only call untrained waters, or, switching elements, an earth
> that slips away and will not forgive until you, the bereaved, provide an
> answer, a calling out, a witness, an incorporation, then a release, a
> grievous release, where what one senses is fundamentally shrill, a bondage
> which begins to slowly subside. The house of the beloved is disassembled.
> Through the floor beams one sees a rich, dark earth and one says, now we can
> move on; we have the provision, a fertile one, to do so.
> "She no longer walks these hills."
>
|