it is a bitter thing to be the disposable animal, a bitter thing. - Louise Glück

Silence had entered me.
It was like the night, and my memories - they were like stars
in that they were fixed, though of course
if one would see they are unending fires, like the fires of hell.

Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond — surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects
to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.
I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.

Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray.
When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,
my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?
Through the birches, I could see the pond.
The sun was cutting small white holes in the water.

I got up finally; I walked down to the pond.
I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself,
like a girl after her first lover
turning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign.
But nakedness in women is always a pose.
I was not transfigured. I would never be free.