Speak... I go no further.
Stratford-on-Avon
Flowers in my hand, I thought to visit his grave, but as I limped across the yard, thinking of the bone house and how each of us ends there, remembering those underneath my shoes, under the tree, under the threatening sky, I laid the flowers on another’s grave, and the dove carved on that granite nodded, as it were, pecked me across the grass, among the weeds, reminding me of other men’s grief.
That woman, over there on her knees, isn’t that Nancy Richards? I recognize her shoulders and the back of her head. Her father died last month.
What stupidity, this crawling, mewing, kneeling, this unresurrectable world, with weeds that smell of dust.
I remember a king’s grave in Denmark, with falcons carved on it, falcons of black marble, perched on top a branch, carved black centuries ago.
I walked through the rain, moving as fast as my legs would let me, my soul full of discord and dismay, wishing I had not gone, resolved to confine myself to myself, incarcerate my grief in my writing, or, if I could not write, be ennobled, not afflicted as other men are with contagion.
The fault, dear Brutus...
