Averno<\/p>\n
Louise Gluck<\/p>\n
Averno. Ancient name, Avernus. A small crater lake, ten miles west of Naples, Italy; regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld.<\/p>\n
1<\/p>\n
You die when your spirit dies.
\nOtherwise, you live.
\nYou may not do a good job of it, but you go on —
\nsomething you have no choice about.<\/p>\n
When I tell this to my children
\nthey pay no attention.
\nThe old people, they think–
\nthis is what they always do:
\ntalk about things no one can see
\nto cover up all the brain cells they\u00c3\u00adre losing.
\nThey wink at each other;
\nlisten to the old one, talking about the spirit
\nbecause he can\u00c3\u00adt remember anymore the word for chair.<\/p>\n
It is terrible to be alone.
\nI don\u00c3\u00adt mean to live alone–
\nto be alone, where no one hears you.<\/p>\n
I remember the word for chair.
\nI want to say–I\u00c3\u00adm just not interested anymore.<\/p>\n
I wake up thinking
\nyou have to prepare.
\nSoon the spirit will give up–
\nall the chairs in the world won\u00c3\u00adt help you.<\/p>\n
I know what they say when I\u00c3\u00adm out of the room.
\nShould I be seeing someone, should I be taking
\none of the new drugs for depression.
\nI can hear them, in whispers, planning how to divide the cost.<\/p>\n
And I want to scream out
\nyou\u00c3\u00adre all of you living in a dream.<\/p>\n
Bad enough, they think, to watch me falling apart.
\nBad enough without this lecturing they get these days
\nas though I had any right to this new information.<\/p>\n
Well, they have the same right.<\/p>\n
They\u00c3\u00adre living in a dream, and I\u00c3\u00adm preparing
\nto be a ghost. I want to shout out<\/p>\n
the mist has cleared–
\nIt\u00c3\u00ads like some new life:
\nyou have no stake in the outcome;
\nyou know the outcome.<\/p>\n
Think of it: sixty years sitting in chairs. And now the mortal spirit
\nseeking so openly, so fearlessly–<\/p>\n
To raise the veil.
\nTo see what you\u00c3\u00adre saying goodbye to.<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
I didn\u00c3\u00adt go back for a long time.
\nWhen I saw the field again, autumn was finished.
\nHere, it finishes almost before it starts–
\nthe old people don\u00c3\u00adt even own summer clothing.<\/p>\n
The field was covered with snow, immaculate.
\nThere wasn\u00c3\u00adt a sign of what happened here.
\nYou didn\u00c3\u00adt know whether the farmer
\nhad replanted or not.
\nMaybe he gave up and moved away.<\/p>\n
The police didn\u00c3\u00adt catch the girl.
\nAfter awhile they said she moved to some other country,
\none where they don\u00c3\u00adt have fields.<\/p>\n
A disaster like this
\nleaves no mark on the earth.
\nAnd people like that–they think it gives them
\na fresh start.<\/p>\n
I stood a long time, staring at nothing.
\nAfter a bit, I noticed how dark it was, how cold.<\/p>\n
A long time–I have no idea how long.
\nOnce the earth decides to have no memory
\ntime seems in a way meaningless.<\/p>\n
But not to my children. They\u00c3\u00adre after me
\nto make a will; they\u00c3\u00adre worried the government
\nwill take everything.<\/p>\n
They should come with me sometime
\nto look at this field under the cover of snow.
\nThe whole thing is written out there.<\/p>\n
Nothing: I have nothing to give them.<\/p>\n
That\u00c3\u00ads the first part.
\nThe second is: I don\u00c3\u00adt want to be burned.<\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
On one side, the soul wanders.
\nOn the other, human beings living in fear.
\nIn between, the pit of disappearance.<\/p>\n
Some young girls ask me
\nif they\u00c3\u00adll be safe near Averno–
\nthey\u00c3\u00adre cold, they want to go south a little while.
\nAnd one says, like a joke, but not too far south\u00c3\u00b3<\/p>\n
I say, as safe as anywhere
\nwhich makes them happy.
\nWhat it means is nothing is safe.<\/p>\n
You get on a train, you disappear.
\nYou write your name on the window, you disappear.
\n There are places like this everywhere,
\nplaces you enter as a young girl,
\nfrom which you never return.<\/p>\n
Like the field, the one that burned.
\nAfterward, the girl was gone.
\nMaybe she didn\u00c3\u00adt exist,
\nwe have no proof either way.<\/p>\n
All we know is:
\nthe field burned.
\nBut we saw that.<\/p>\n
So we have to believe in the girl,
\nin what she did. Otherwise
\nit\u00c3\u00ads just forces we don\u00c3\u00adt understand
\nruling the earth.<\/p>\n
The girls are happy, thinking of their vacation.
\nDon\u00c3\u00adt take a train, I say.<\/p>\n
They write their names in mist on a train window.
\nI want to say, you\u00c3\u00adre good girls,
\ntrying to leave your names behind.<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
We spent the whole day
\nsailing the archipelago,
\nthe tiny islands that were part of the peninsula<\/p>\n
until they\u00c3\u00add broken off
\ninto the fragments you see now
\nfloating in the northern sea water.<\/p>\n
They seemed safe to me,
\nI think because no one can live there.<\/p>\n
Later we sat in the kitchen
\nwatching the evening start and then the snow.
\nFirst one, then the other.<\/p>\n
We grew silent, hypnotized by the snow
\nas though a kind of turbulence
\nthat had been hidden before
\nwas becoming visible,<\/p>\n
something within the night
\nexposed now\u00c3\u00b3<\/p>\n
In our silence, we were asking
\nthose questions friends who trust each other
\nask out of great fatigue,
\neach one hoping the other knows more<\/p>\n
and when this isn\u00c3\u00adt so, hoping
\ntheir shared impressions will amount to insight.<\/p>\n
Is there any benefit in forcing upon oneself
\nthe realization that one must die?
\nIs it possible to miss the opportunity of one\u00c3\u00ads life?<\/p>\n
Questions like that.<\/p>\n
The snow heavy. The black night
\ntransformed into busy white air.<\/p>\n
Something we hadn\u00c3\u00adt seen revealed.
\nOnly the meaning wasn\u00c3\u00adt revealed.<\/p>\n
5<\/p>\n
After the first winter, the field began to grow again.
\nBut there were no more orderly furrows.
\nThe smell of the wheat persisted, a kind of random aroma
\nintermixed with various weeds, for which
\nno human use has been as yet devised.<\/p>\n
It was puzzling\u00c3\u00b3no one knew
\nwhere the farmer had gone.
\nSome people thought he died.
\nSomeone said he had a daughter in New Zealand,
\nthat he went there to raise
\ngrandchildren instead of wheat.<\/p>\n
Nature, it turns out, isn\u00c3\u00adt like us;
\nit doesn\u00c3\u00adt have a warehouse of memory.
\nThe field doesn\u00c3\u00adt become afraid of matches,
\nof young girls. It doesn\u00c3\u00adt remember
\nfurrows either. It gets killed off, it gets burned,
\nand a year later it\u00c3\u00ads alive again
\nas though nothing unusual has occurred.<\/p>\n
The farmer stares out the window.
\nMaybe in New Zealand, maybe somewhere else.
\nAnd he thinks: my life is over.
\nHis life expressed itself in that field;
\nhe doesn\u00c3\u00adt believe anymore in making anything
\nout of earth. The earth, he thinks,
\nhas overpowered me.<\/p>\n
He remembers the day the field burned,
\nnot, he thinks, by accident.
\nSomething deep within him said: I can live with this,
\nI can fight it after awhile.<\/p>\n
The terrible moment was the spring after his work was erased,
\nwhen he understood that the earth
\ndidn\u00c3\u00adt know how to mourn, that it would change instead.
\nAnd then go on existing without him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Averno Louise Gluck Averno. Ancient name, Avernus. A small crater lake, ten miles west of Naples, Italy; regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. 1 You die when your spirit dies. Otherwise, you live. You may … Continue reading