Interlude

An Unusual Poem

This came to me one afternoon, harking back to some forty years ago when repressed memories of a violent time began to appear to me in incomprehensible forms, along with the conviction that something had happened that I could not remember. While it doesn’t seem immediately germane to the topic of kindness and courage or keeping the lights on more generally, it also shows the way the mind opens up old doors as it expands into a new and fearsome task. Maybe I will have to go at least partway back to this time in order to find some solid ground to stand on.

The next several years were ones of depression, PTSD (though it wasn’t called that quite yet), doubt, and work with survivors of mass violence because somehow we seemed to have something in common. Some matters were resolved; many were not. Whatever had happened had been long before I began to look, and in another country far away. No one would talk about it and the data were scarce.

I will just store this in the back of my mind and see what happens now.

The Beginning of Memories

One day the way of my world

was suddenly porous.

Then into the night came

words and dreams too real and too strange

to be mine.

In the deep dark of a country night

bug-sung and steamy, I couldn’t see my hands

before my face, but dreams

flashed like heat lightning, and as silently.

I heard the door click behind me.

ahead were only shapes and words,

names from somewhere I had never known but

now remembered.

The next years were very hard.