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Saturday, August 06, 2011

Leary

How, how, how, how, o stone, can men know when
one is dead? Eyes? One lived when I used them.
I have a tongue; it’s dead. Your cracks go on
for ever. She vaulted them. She’s gone. Heaven
and earth should lend me a look; I am glass.


This is me noodling with some lines from Shakespeare's Lear. Here's the original text I'm mutilating:
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so
That heaven's vaults should crack. — She's gone for ever! —
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass
[King Lear: V.iii.303-7]

1 comment:

through a glass darkly said...

Absence from those we love is self from self... a deadly banishmnent