Читать книгу The Infinitesimals - Laura Kasischke - Страница 11

Who

Who are these elders

in their white robes? These

females and males? These

royals and ruled? Who

are these children? This woman beside me? This

magician, this priest, this meat in this soup, this

utter conundrum—what

is it, and where did it come from?

O Kepler, O Newton, O Darwin, O Driesch.

What machinery all night, and all day

what dream?

And where is my father? I asked and I asked—but I

was no more than the windmill asking

questions of its own

shadow on the grass.

He was never here, they told me. Your

father is not in his bed and not in his grave. No one

has ever lived here

who answered to your father’s name.

I insisted. I begged. I tore my hair. They

gave me sad expressions, then

tea, then pills, then

exasperation. We’re

sorry, but you’re

terribly mistaken.

But, having come to visit my father, I

knelt down in the desert and parted the sands

to search for the path on my knees and hands.

I drank from the mirage

of the pond for an answer until,

finally, the water lilies asked me:

Who was your father?

as they floated there

all girlish laughter and waxen hands, making

and remaking themselves without fathers

out of water and air.