Off the record.
Generosities of language emerge as dusk settles, erupting in dialects more prone to dismissing the manners of a given day. The shock of voices startled into screams, and the lingering pause that attends each, an unofficial record of anguish––which is, in its raw form, consistently resistant to official record.
With Sara Teasdale.
Afterwards, amid the autumn dusk,
Let it be forgotten by February twilight,
these faults.
My heart is heavy with old love.
Love, this is not a word, but an epitaph.
What do I care, in the morning?
Says a voice around me now,
here in this spirit’s house.
***
Today is the birthday of American lyric poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). The lines above are composed with some of her poem titles. The title of this post references a collection she published in 1915.
