It came to me one night as I was falling asleep
that I had finished with those amorous adventures
to which I had long been a slave.
Finished with love? my heart murmured.
To which I responded that many profound discoveries awaited us, hoping, at the same time,
I would not be asked to name them.
For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed— surely this counted for something?
2.
The next night brought the same thought, this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed various other passions and sensations were, in the same way, set aside forever, and each night my heart protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy. But these farewells, I said, are the way of things. And once more I alluded to the vast territory opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart became the steed underneath me.
3.
I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death, though why this landscape was so conventional I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain. The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon faces from the past appeared to me: my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed, finished what they had to say, though now I could hear them because my heart was still.
4.
At this point, I attained the precipice but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side; rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude as far as the eye could see, though gradually the mountain that supported it completely dissolved so that I found myself riding steadily through the air— All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them obliterated by the task of responding to them—
5.
As we had all been flesh together, now we were mist. As we had been before objects with shadows, now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals. Neigh, neigh, said my heart, or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know.
6.
Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun contentedly rising, the feather comforter mounded in white drifts over my lower body. You had been with me— there was a dent in the second pillowcase. We had escaped from death— or was this the view from the precipice?
By Louise Glück
From Faithful and Virtuous Night
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