(no subject)

[swatkat]

I was going to write a post about beloved female characters and double standards, but then I read this poem. I can't form coherent thoughts now.

Perhaps After Death

*

Perhaps
after death
the strange timelessness, matterlessness,
absolute differentness
of eternity
will be shot through
like a starry night
with islands of familiar and beautiful
joys.

For I should like
to spend a star
sitting beside Grandpa Bach
at the organ, learning, at last, to play
the C minor fugue as he, essentially,
heard it burst into creation;

and another star
of moor and mist, and through the shadows
the cold muzzle of the dog against my hand,
and walk with Emily. We would not need
to talk, or ever go back to the damp
of Haworth parsonage for tea;

I should like to eat a golden meal
with my brothers Gregory and Basil
and my sister Macrina. We would raise
our voices and laugh and be a little drunk
with love and joy;

I should like a theatre star
and Will yelling, "No! No! That's not
how I wrote it! But perhaps 'tis better
that way. 'To be or not to be.' All right,
then, let it stand!"

And I should like
another table
-- yes, Plato, please come, and you, too,
Socrates, for this is the essential table
of which all other tables are only
flickering shadows on the wall.
This is the heavenly banquet
(Oh come!)
the eternal convivium

the sky blazes with stars

And you, my friends? Will you come, too?
We cannot go alone.

Perhaps, then, star-dazzled,
we will understand that we have seen him
and all the stars will burst with glory
and we, too, in this ultimate explosion
of matter
and time
we will know what it is

to be

perhaps

- Madeleine L'Engle

Comments

[roga]

Oh, that's beautiful. I don't read much poetry, but I remember being touched by Madeline L'Engle's in A Ring of Endless Light, and this reminds me of that.