"At the Window"

Click here to listen to Linda Gregerson read this poem.


Suppose, we said, that the tumult of the flesh
were to cease
and all that thoughts can conceive, of earth,
of water, and of
air, should no longer speak to us; suppose
that the heavens
and even our own souls were silent, no longer
thinking of themselves
but passing beyond; suppose that our dreams
and the visions
of our imagination spoke no more and that every
tongue and every sign
and all that is transient grew silent—for all
these things
have the same message to tell, if only we can
hear it, and
their message is this: We did not make ourselves,
but he
who abides forever made us. Suppose, we said,
that after giving
us this message and bidding us listen to him who
made them they
fell silent and he alone should speak to us,
not through them
but in his own voice, so that we should hear
him speaking,
not by any tongue of the flesh or by an angel's
voice, not in the
sound of thunder or in some veiled parable
but in his own voice,
the voice of the one for whose sake we love
what he has made;
suppose we heard him without these, as we two
strained to do …
And then my mother said, "I do not know why
I am here."
And my brother for her sake wished she might
die in her own
country and not abroad and she said, "See
how he speaks."
And so in the ninth day of her illness, in the
fifty-sixth year
of her life and the thirty-third of mine, at the
mouth of the Tiber
.....................................in Ostia ...

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