Sometimes, dozing for hours,
books open on the couch,
I still hear the scenes of conflict,
descriptions of death, partings, the sea,
the masterful consolations
whenever humanity finally learns
how to love itself. I think I even hear
pieces of me in the characters roaming those pages-
Levin, for one, or that dumb, righteous government official
dying of cancer who discovers life with only days left
after he breaks through the “black sack”
and light transfigures every cell of his miserable existence.
Tolstoi, is Ivan Illych us, was he you, are we
all doomed never to comprehend our lives?
In your Last Diaries every word you wrote
attacks the horror of death, attacks the “I,”
all’s gobbled by fear except “the soul.”
I touch the cool gray pages.
Nights after Reading
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