m
to send up a cry of relief. "At last! You're suffering! At last a person
can approach you!" They console me and lull me; they are crows
quarreling over the remains of a charnel-house.

But when they have the effrontery to extol his virtues, it is too much;
my grief springs to the attack. The idea! They hated him while he lived!
Keep quiet, don't insult him! I wish to be alone with the knowledge that
he is dead.

But I don't utter a word; grief has lips of stone; I keep my secret
locked within me while seeming to listen to them. I sit in front of the
fire, my hair loose, my forehead drawn, watching the flames blaze and
the embers fall. After all, their presence, their footsteps pawing the
silence, mean only a little additional pain. Time passes, and they're
sure to go eventually.

Has the door closed on them? I don't know. I can hardly move.

I am alone with you, my knees clasped in my hands, while the castle in
the fire slowly crumbles on its gray dust.

Some mourners at least have the consolation of mourning real dead--real
dead whom they have seen stiffen into death, whose last words they have
received, whose last agonies they have tried to soothe, for whom they
have done everything they could.

But you, beloved, are you dead? I don't even know. "Fallen on the field
of honor?" What does that mean? Was it in the evening or the morning?
Were you alone? Did you cry out? Did you suffer terribly? Did you open
your eyes once more? Perhaps you couldn't, perhaps you called and called
for me? Perhaps you thought I should have come? Ah yes, I should have
been there; it is my fault. I have always cured you, you know I have. I
simply had to hold your head in my hands and your pain was eased.

But I didn't die--I didn't die at the moment of your death, that moment
too frightful to speak of. I didn't die when life was drowned in your
mouth. We knew the whole truth concerning each other, yet when you were
dying I may have been smiling.

For fifteen nights, fifteen days, fifteen years my heart has been crying
that you are dead and that it has lost the hope of ever seeing you again
in your clothes exactly as you used to look, with that manner of
yours.... Fifteen days since I have been trying to learn again, begin
all over again, and call everything into question again. Fifteen days of
impotence. I see only what is.

There is earth on your hands, on your eyes, on every part of your body
wherever it may be. Your feet are c