Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich
[The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (New York: Norton, 1984) ]
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
–And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.
**********************************************
Every mention of death in the sermon today seemed like a special message just for me. And I would start thinking about how my children are too young for me to disappear. And I would imagine that Scout and Huckie would be bewildered; that Nu would be devastated, become hard; that At would rally, becoming more vulnerable as he goes. That they'll all keep looking for me everywhere. Ugh.
_
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
–And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.
**********************************************
Every mention of death in the sermon today seemed like a special message just for me. And I would start thinking about how my children are too young for me to disappear. And I would imagine that Scout and Huckie would be bewildered; that Nu would be devastated, become hard; that At would rally, becoming more vulnerable as he goes. That they'll all keep looking for me everywhere. Ugh.
_
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