I've just received news that my stepmother died this morning at about three a.m. local time, at the age of 84. She had had a series of non-critical strokes in the past few years, but had been still living at home with my Dad (to whom she had been married for what would have been 45 years this coming Saturday).
This list is such a melange of the public and the personal - so I think it not unfiltting to mark here this personal event by sharing with fellow list-members the poem which I have chosen as an important element in conversation about my stepmother's life and death with friends and family. The name 'Jeanette' by which my stepmother was familarly known (she was of French-Canadian descent), was in fact a familiar version of her 'real' name, 'Jeanne' - and for me the following poem is made somehow through this 'accidental' relevance yet more than obliquely fitting:
[Please excuse the absence of accents and other diacritical marks which I have not learned how to insert.]
Jean et Jeanne -Yves Bonnefoy Tu demandes le nom De cette maison basse delabree, C'est Jean et Jeanne en un autre pays. Quand les larges vents passent Le seuil ou rien ne chante ni parait. C'est Jean et Jeanne et de leurs faces grises Le platre du jour tombe et je revois La vitre des etes anciens. Te souviens-tu? La plus brilliant au loin, l'arche fille des ombres. Aujourd'hui, ce soir, nour ferons un feu Dans la grande salle. Nous nous eloignerons, Nous le laisserons vivre pour les morts.[ Translation by A. Hartley: "You ask the name of this low ruined house, it is Jean and Jeanne in another country. When the wide winds pass the threshhold where nothing sings or appears. It is Jean and Jeanne and day's plaster falls from their grey faces and I see again the window-pane of old summers. Do you remember? Far off the most shining one, arch daughter of shadows. Today in the evening we shall make a fire in the great hall. We shall withdraw, we shall let it live for the dead."]
Chris Bruce Kiel, Germany (and for the moment in thought and memory, Winnipeg and Ottawa, Canada) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
