I keep reading her poem about the search for reason, like an archaeologist searching through the ruins of the past for clues for today, thinking back to when I thought things had a reason, as if life provides reason for good or bad, right or wrong, as if reason is remotely reasonable when it comes to being human, or even real.
You can grasp it in the palm of your hand, feeling it quiver, filled with expectations of making sense when all it does is stir something up inside you that you can’t control, when in fact is it you trembling and not this other thing we clutch, the vibration, the terrible ache for it never satisfied except maybe when you rock it to sleep, cuddle with it, accepting it as you press against it, and yet even then it remains a stranger, lying beside you in your bed, beyond “reason,” although you imagine you can feel it or taste it, like old wine lingering on the tip of your tongue, possibly elegant, often bitter, but never real, no matter how hard we caress it or seek to mold it, or force ourselves upon it, always more like rubbing against stone, our flesh wearing out long before it does, reasons remaining unmoved, a cold lover, leaving it up to us to adjust, to turn all this that happens to us into something we need it to be, something we can love with the desperate hope we can make it love us back, trying to seduce reason into making sense, when in the end – as her poem points out – we merely drive ourselves crazy, throwing our bodies against cold stone.
No comments:
Post a Comment