Devotions - Day 7
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It was on the Saturday
It was on the Saturday that he was not there. Those who don’t like corpses can’t stay away from graveyards, unless there’s some prohibition to stop them revisiting the dead end of their hopes and their dreams. It’s as if they think that should the voice speak again, it will speak there or a sunbeam will dance or a flower will shoot and give a sign of misinterpreted life. But close the cemetery, or confine, through custom or constraint, the wailing ones to the house and it looms larger… the loss, the lostness, the losers. Men shiver in an upstairs room, warm though the day is. Women weep in an uncharmed circle. Memory is forced on memory. The mind’s eye tries to trace the profile and the face, the smile, the gentle twitching of the nose… and fails. And a panic sets in because it seems he can’t be remembered. Was he ever known? It was on the Saturday that he was not there. |
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