To say you loved a person. / To say that person no longer exists. / A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on.
Mary Jo BangWhy are you not where you belong? / A black hat on a hook says nothing. / Ashes mirror ashes / In a mirroring window.
Mary Jo BangYou are reduced / To the after-sorrow / That will last my lifetime. The hair-tearing / Grief of the mother / Whose child has been swept away.
Mary Jo BangBertrand Russell said, 'Electricity is not a thing like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave.' And it's not 'they' who say, but Walter Benjamin who said, 'Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base and the banal.' In September, 1940, Benjamin died under ambiguous circumstances in the French-Spanish border town of Portbou, while attempting to flee the Nazis.
Mary Jo Bang