After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
Comments on this entry are closed.
What a tough reminder, Gerard. Interestingly enough I was thinking about “last times” yesterday. As we’re getting older, there will be more and more last times. Which is appropriate, I think, since the first half of our lives is filled with “first times.” And the more first times we had, the more last times we’ll have.
Driving through downtown this afternoon, I realized I had already take my last drive on the viaduct and through the Battery Street tunnel quite a while ago. I loved the viaduct and the tunnel. Pretty soon it will be the last time for a lot of things that we’ve been doing for most of our lives.
On September 10th we said our prayers, climbed into bed, turned out the light, and went to sleep. I heard once that God made the world round so that we couldn’t see too far off into the distance.
The trick is to keep hope alive.
It was a beautiful day.
The first plane rattled our windows.
Nine hours was all my ill health would allow me, long enough for the heated ground to take the soles off my shoes. I’m looking at the box on the shelf I keep them in, unopened since that day. Others have told me they did the same.
You could smell the bodies baking. The “curious, sweet smell” pervaded the air for months.