Faithful and Virtuous Night

by Louise Glück

Spring, and the curtains flutter. Breezes enter the room, bringing the first insects. A sound of buzzing like the sound of prayers.

It had occurred to me that all human beings are divided into those who wish to move forward and those who wish to go back. Or you could say, those who wish to keep moving and those who want to be stopped in their tracks as by the blazing sword.

I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem there is no perfect ending. Indeed, there are infinite endings. Or perhaps, once one begins, there are only endings.

I write about you all the time, I said aloud. Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.

Who would call in the middle of the night? Trouble calls, despair calls. Joy is sleeping like a baby.

He is at that point in life at which neither returning to the beginning nor advancing to the end seems bearable; therefore, he has decided to stop, here, in the midst of things, though this makes him an obstacle to others, such as ourselves.

My friend, said the animal, why not abandon me? Alone, you can find your way here. But to abandon you, said the other, would be to leave a part of myself behind, and how can I do that when I do not know which part you are?

But if the essence of time is change, how can anything become nothing? This was the question I asked myself.

The sun was rising. The air had become heavy, not because it had greater substance but because there was nothing left to breathe.

Mother died last night, Mother who never dies.