.
The older Kierkegaard has entered his front
door and is creakily attempting to lock himself in when it comes over
him all at once, one last great wave of gloomy illumination: what if
God’s greatest blessing is to render a person’s existence so
intolerable, so completely unendurable that the next time he [or she]
happens to grope for the familiar fear of dying, he [or she] discovers
it is gone, is nowhere to be found, has in fact been replaced by a
simple weightless sense of well-being and peace he (or she) had long
forgotten he (or she) was capable of feeling.
Around midnight he took the oxycodone
and listened to Arvo Pärt’s “I Am the True Vine”
over and over, the snow falling harder now.
He switched off the light and sat without dread
of the coming hours, quietly singing along;
he smoked any number of cigarettes without thinking
once about the horrifying consequence;
he was legibly told what to say and he wrote
with mounting excitement and pleasure,
and sent friendly e-mails to everyone, Lord
I had such a good time and I don't regret anything —
What happened to the prayer that goes like that?
–Franz Wright
Wheeling Motel
.
I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)
–Franz Wright
.
