The old women in black at early Mass in winter are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes they have seen Christ. They make the kernel of his being and the clarity around it seem meagre, as though he needs girders to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses against the Lord. He will not abandon his life. Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills along the banks where he became a young man as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them even though they are gone, to measure against. The silver is worn down to the brass underneath and is the better for it. He will gauge by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain. He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore, a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control. A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt.
Jack Gilbert The New Yorker Magazine, January 3, 2005
Refusing Heaven
Posted - Mar 02 2008 : 8:33:51 PM
