Читать книгу Letters from Max - Sarah Ruhl - Страница 58

SEPTEMBER 12

Dear Max,

A little poem for you that I wrote:

LUNCH WITH MAX ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE

1.

The skinny women on the upper east side

have eaten too many salads and

have come to resemble their own salads.

Dry and brittle, they push kale around on their plates.

They need some cooked food, and quick.

You, a young man, also skinny,

push the food around on your plate—

but it’s warm and has the

flavor of the poison medicine doctors give you.

2.

The wildness of youth

and the wildness of death—

too much to bear, so close together.

A big why called to God over ageless time . . .

Some loop closed by old age,

the droop of an old man’s head

conferring a measure of acceptance,

head already looking at the ground, thinking:

when will a hole open up

and I’ll fall into it?

3.

We talk of Madame Bovary and whether her

emotions are banal and whether the doctor’s are really not banal

and whether emotions can ever even be banal

or if they only seem banal in art.

Health does not belong to literature.

I wish it did.

Max is a poet.

Max is a poem.

We all become poems

in the end.