TO THE MUSE AFTER A LONG ILLNESS

Abstract

3 3 R T O T H E M U S E A F T E R A L O N G I L L N E S S F R A N N I E L I N D S A Y 1 And as the hour approaches, an old man comes to my door – five-day beard, no socks, topsiders worn at the heel to nothing – to tell me he loves me. So what say the pink and white petunias, limp as rinsed lace from the rain in their earthenware pot. So what says the yellow and black baby snail bustling along her homely millimeter over the concrete step. And the birds of the early evening starting their practicing, little prodigies on public school flutes: so what. 2 For then is there not the world of the heart, the light that is more a darkness from shining upon so much pitiful evil and equally hapless good? And has that light not yearned for a simple roof to touch, or the wondrously neutral tip of a ginkgo leaf just for a minute? 3 4 Y 3 For the very first time in my life, I take a hand in mine, and it so happens to be his, 4 and the ear keen to minimal singing can still hear the tiger lilies’ lazy hallelujahs. 5 He had stopped being concerned with dapper appearance: tweed coat, clean argyles put away by his gentle wife. Exhausted belt clutching itself for dear life by the tightest loop holding his dungarees up. 6 After he leaves for his early supper of porridge I go back to my rocking chair and the novel I left splayed open and read until I would have stopped weeping 7 Remember how the lankily rejoicing lilies got louder at first, June after June, then fainter, until by August you had to make up words of your own to sustain them. And then they grew into the old hymn of stalks, 3 5 R their flopped leaves like big Sunday frocks gone out of fashion. Instead of the raucous orange a stillness whose color only the wind could see. 8 But never, no never, ceased. for Joaquim ...