by inkinthewell on Sat Oct 18, 2014 4:48 pm
The title is from a prose poem by Franz Wright from Kindertotenwald (which should merrily translate as Forest Of Dead Children) and here's the text:
NUDE WITH HANDGUN AND ROSARY
The small silver crucified man hangs between her breasts like an arrow directing attention away from the face in its nimbus of unasked-for beauty, all that stands between her and apparition, while pointing the way to the ever inexplicable V, all that's left of her animal: damp, like the tip of a painter's brush just dipped in darkest blue. She has put the thing on like a necklace and gone to admire it in the full-length mirror, in muted light the color of gold's shadow at this late-afternoon hour. There's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight. How describe it? But then there are more important things to think about than light. It lies on the dresser blackly glowing, the one object that's completely self-explanatory here. Just look at you, child with the sun-colored eyes, waiting in line with love's innumerable patients and their grievances at scarecrowlike standstill, how slowly, how badly, they mend; just one more being tested, in need of new double-thick Coke-bottle glasses, straining in the poor light to make out the oversize letters of their own obituaries while they're waiting to be born... Soon, soon, between one instant and the next, you will be well.
There is a sound that comes from houses with no other house in sight.
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans - JL 1940-1980