When the loved daily words
lose their meaning
and bread cannot be named,
or water, or window,
and all dialogue has proven false
that wasn’t with our own desolate image,
when you can still look over the tattered Pictures
in your kid brother’s book–
then it’s good to greet the cloth and the dishes arranged on the table,
good to see that the cherry liqueur grandmother made
and the apples put buy for safekeeping
converse their happiness in the old sideboard.
When the form of trees
is merely the slight memory of their form,
a lie invented
by autumn’s turbid memory,
and days have the confusion of the attic
no one climbs up to,
and the cruel whiteness of eternity
makes Light flee from itself–
then something reminds us of the truth
we love even before we know it:
branches snap lightly,
the pigeon coop is filled with fluttering,
the granary dreams again of the sun,
we Light for the party
pale candelabras in the dusty parlor,
and silence reveals to us the secret
we didn’t want to hear.
en From the Country of Nevermore, 1990
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