Kundera Says

Left Out at the Gate

Kundera says
   “…love begins at the point
   when a woman enters her first word
   into our poetic memory.’’*

Step inside you say and
I stumble as I cross
The threshold of your awareness
To meet your ghosts of loss.
With barriers so high at
Your fortress of resistance
I hear your warning cry as it
Rings across our distance.
Is this palace an illusion filled with
hope for future years?
Or a remnant of past encounters
that color present fears?

Scraped against your boundary I’m
Surrounded on all sides
The ghosts advance to taunt me
I’ve no handhold, and no guide
I feel as though I’m sinking
In some primordial stew
As words rush to defend me
Tumbling out, they offend you
I know I need just one word
Just one word that holds the key
That word is still a mystery and I
can’t enter,

your poetic memory.



*From Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Reviews

[robin]

Oh yeah that was great fun...makes me want to know more of the mind of the writer. Makes me want to squeeze that word right out of her...Kundera eh...lovely!