The Wild Iris
by Louise Gluck
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abrubtly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
I've always had an irrational fear of being buried alive. How nice to think of that being a prelude to blooming.
ReplyDeleteNot irrational. This fear is very real. It is so important to be truly dead before being declared dead. This is the reason for the practice of the bell installed in the casket - the practical woman's solution to the very understandable, totally forgivable mistake. Such a celebration would ensue if one might unbury the loved one - thought to be dead, but not dead, signaled by the ringing of the above-ground bell. I, too, hope to have such a bell.
ReplyDeleteI love it. I'm so literal, this poem for me is winter. I die every winter. I close in. I hibernate. I go under ground. I eat more, I lethargize (I think I made that word up.) Then with spring, I get more energy, I feel creative, I become active, I push forward from the darkness, I bloom.
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