.jpg)
Sport 31: Spring 2003
After such events
After such events
This week I have put down two bits of reality
which were far cries from what I would call
a reality of my own.
One was a person I knew
well enough to discuss love and art and death,
although I know nothing of what she said as she
dialled a wrong number, read her children's
reports, decided on recipes, or said when
men touched her in the sensuous hours
before dawn.
The other was a novel
about a nice person and made me think
of a largish, nondescript woman dabbling
her calves in a Para-pool and thinking, if she
ever wrote, there would be no problem
in knowing exactly what a model feels
in her candied bikini as she pouted
into the waves, and the sea dabbed at her
half in reverence, half discomfort …
Should
I try to describe my friend let alone
the novel to a third person, who in turn
re-described to a friend, that friend could hardly
hazard—this is my guess—not know
which story had three hundred pages, which
veins and cerebellum and spleen and thighs.
Which lived, which stepped from fantasy's
rainbow, is not the domain of the person
who hears from another the reported story
which, after all, is what she, he, we,
are after: the riffling of pages that spring
from any grave.