Sunday, November 9, 2008

Quote 5

Approaching death,
as we think, the death of love,
no distinction
any more suffices to differentiate
the particulars
of place and condition
with which we have been long
familiar.
All appears
as if seen
wavering through water.
We start awake with a cry
of recognition
but soon the outlines
become again vague.
If we are to understand our time,
we must find the key to it,
not in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries,
but in earlier, wilder
and darker epochs...
So to know, what I have to know
about my own death,
if it be real,
I have to take it apart.

From "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (Book II) by William Carlos Williams. Emphasis mine.

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