Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

In youth we are not so much embarrassed by the reality of our situation as fearful others might discover and judge it.

as if we were in a time capsule of the war years when blackouts and curfews had been in effect, when there was just warlight

“The self is not the principal thing,” was a half-wisdom Olive Lawrence murmured to me once.

return to that earlier time armed with the present, and no matter how dark that world was, you do not leave it unlit. You take your adult self with you. It is not to be a reliving, but a rewitnessing. Unless of course you wish, like my sister, to damn and enact revenge on the whole pack of them.

Wars don’t end. They never remain in the past. ‘Seville to wound, Córdoba to die in.’ That’s the important lesson.”