Reason as cold as stone Dec. 2, 2012
I keep reading her poem about the search for reason, like an
archaeologist searching through the ruins of the past for clues for today,
thinking back to when I thought things had a reason, as if life provides reason
for good or bad, right or wrong, as if reason is remotely reasonable when it
comes to being human, or even real.
You can grasp it in the palm of your hand, feeling it quiver,
filled with expectations of making sense when all it does is stir something up
inside you that you can’t control, when in fact is it you trembling and not
this other thing we clutch, the vibration, the terrible ache for it never satisfied
except maybe when you rock it to sleep, cuddle with it, accepting it as you
press against it, and yet even then it remains a stranger, lying beside you in your
bed, beyond “reason,” although you imagine you can feel it or taste it, like
old wine lingering on the tip of your tongue, possibly elegant, often bitter,
but never real, no matter how hard we caress it or seek to mold it, or force
ourselves upon it, always more like rubbing against stone, our flesh wearing
out long before it does, reasons
remaining unmoved, a cold lover, leaving it up to us to adjust, to turn
all this that happens to us into something we need it to be, something we can
love with the desperate hope we can make it love us back, trying to seduce
reason into making sense, when in the end – as her poem points out – we merely
drive ourselves crazy, throwing our bodies against cold stone.
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