Say Something Back & Time Lived, Without Its Flow by Denise Riley

Author:Denise Riley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN MONTHS AFTER:

Superficially “fine” as my daily air of cheerfulness carries me around with an unseen crater blown into my head, the truth is that my thoughts are turned constantly to life and to death; all that I can now attentively hold.

It still seems ludicrous to decide, finally, that I shall not see that face on this earth. What would be “natural” would be his beaming reappearance, a bit sheepish at having been away from home for so long. More limp puns abound: you conceived the child, but you can’t conceive of its death.

The persisting impression of the living-on of the dead child as your mind ploughs on along its familiar cognitive furrows. It’s like that cartoon image of Donald Duck running straight off the edge of a cliff, his webbed feet going on paddling wildly in the air—until he looks down. He’ll only plummet once he’s put together what he’s just glimpsed, the ground far below, with his realization of his mid-air state.

Wherever can you find written accounts of this lived time without consequence? It’s rare. Here, though, is Emily Dickinson’s quatrain, relentlessly to the point:

The thought behind I strove to join

Unto the thought before,

But sequence ravelled out of sound

Like balls upon a floor.

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