At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
From Wild Iris (Ecco Press, 1990).
About Louise Glück
Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long
Island. The Wild Iris (1992) received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's
William Carlos Williams Award. Louise Glück teaches at Williams College and lives in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor of The
Academy of American Poets.