More on: death

The dead who walk the streets might be a relic of the past, something your Sicilian grandma might tell you about, but the Sanctuary of the Souls of the Beheaded is very much alive.

It’s sugar that makes fruit gel. Sugar preserves. Sugar is an everyday miracle. It causes fruit to retain its bright color, until it is brighter than it ever was on the tree. Heat and sugar alchemize to turn a jar of jam into a glowing jewel.

Every time my father dies, I write a poem.

What is heaven but the immortal fulfillment of a mortal longing? What is it but the most sublime synthesis of memory and dream?

I give you my thanks. Perhaps
you see that in my eyes, although
the only words I have left
are no doubt cruel.

First we cry.
Then the tears turn to stone.
Then we remember just one thing:
The death of a son.

The nurses took off the sterile white net,
tied your hair back from your beautiful face,
and detached the machines to let you die.

Doesn’t a fire, good and hot, burn back into a wound until there’s nothing left for it to do but heal?

What’s death? Horizon kept moving by time & denial? Hank of water hung in air where love once stood, naked among stones? His hand there. By which I mean here? Ink-steeped wolf, boar, fox bristles lineate feet, mons, breast, heart in conjuring vista: the fist itching opens. A graveyard, too, a cosmos of parts; platitude…

Krzysztof Kieślowski (1993) DO YOU FEEL ABLE TO TALK? is the first full line in Three Colors: Blue, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s masterpiece of a meditation on grief and liberation. “Were you conscious during the….” is the next. The doctor is unable to finish the question he poses to a woman who has just lost her husband…