Читать книгу Grace, Fallen from - Marianne Boruch - Страница 16

To shrink down and not be small

but just to see again, he said

of the past, the past as broken mirror,

as weird-looking stick

because this was the woods,

halfway through the hike.

To refrain from the cheesy, the self-serving, from

knowing too much. That voice,

his again. So there were rules. But how can we

know too much, she said. Memory,

she said, come on, it’s all about

forgetting. Think of the things

lost to make that box

of odds and ends. They

kept walking. Somewhere, a real road. They could

hear it. He almost told her,

you’ll test me now. You’ll ask me

how long did it take

to hold a pencil, to write the word

fabulous or maybe just dog

for the first time. And if he

shook his head— See? she’d say,

see? I remember the fifth grade, he said,

those endless afternoons, don’t you?

Not one, she said. They got quiet, the river

on their left now, the water

too low. The whole world

needed rain. But she flashed

on that strange little

storefront in Oregon once,

the counterman saying: why, there

you are! I’ve been waiting a decade

for you to walk in here.

Then she was telling it, outloud, in the air. Probably

a pick-up line, he said. What

were you? 20? 22? Sudden click

in her head, a double take, two

exposures, one picture,

the first shock of it back

from the photo lab:

and here I thought

it merely some brilliant bit of the novel

my life was writing. Did they pause?

Because I hear him about to say:

so you kept it, that’s

funny. They walked on. A field

opened up. Is that

a song sparrow

or a white-throat? he said. I can’t remember, she said, notes

rushing downward but three clear

hesitations before that great

blurring. It got darker,

crooked ash and ivy, an overgrown

path where I stopped.

Where the two of them

kept going.