May iniisip ka?
Oo.
Ano?
Ayaw kong sabihin. Baka magkatotoo.
Dahil makulit ka
Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
na, mula noong 24 Enero, 2006, ang nakitambay dito
Stephen Dunn
Monday, December 03, 2007
Suicides
It's usually a flirtation with Plath or Sexton or Berryman, but of my many students who've written about suicide, two have actually done it. After the second, years ago, I decided never to try to improve such a poem. We discuss it privately. I say, Don't do it. I say, Make an appointment with a counselor. Meanwhile, for myself, I've thought: how sensible. When my body becomes someone else's chore, when the mind fogs and the days lengthen and I'm unable to transform suffering into one of the higher pleasures, I hope to have the courage. Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another? And won't it be easy to assume I'm dead already? But say a wise nurse, sensing my mood, shows me the tattoo on her breast. And a wise friend reminds me that the right solution is rarely the only one. I can imagine the lovely tactics of those who care. Rehearsals, postponements.
*
Funerals
No right way to feel. Pure grief perhaps if the death was sudden and your child's. But if a parent is lying there and you're no longer a child, likely that sadness is mixing with relief. Perhaps there's even a small corner of freedom, in which you find yourself making plans. When my brother wept at grandmother's funeral, I drifted back to when Anthony Salvo hit him with a rock. "I'll get you dickface, I'll get you dickface," he kept repeating through his tears. Once I caught myself thinking about baseball. Another time, as the coffin was lowered, I recalled that a group of larks is called an exaltation. And who hasn't imagined his own dark day, even his own eulogy, and what friend might deliver it, and the exact quavering of his voice.
