Sharon Olds - Cambridge Elegy lyrics

(for Henry Averell Gerry, 1941-60) I hardly know how to speak to you now, you are so young now, closer to my daughter's age than mine -- but I have been there and seen it, and must tell you, as the seeing and hearing spell the world into the deaf-mute's hand. The tiny dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the long row of teats on a pig, still perk up over the Square, though they're digging up the street now, as if digging a grave, the shovels shrieking on stone like your car sliding along on its roof after the crash. How I wanted everyone to die I if you had to die, how sealed into my own world I was, deaf and blind. What can I tell you now, now that I know so much and you are a freshman still, drinking a quart of orange juice and playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you we were right, our bodies were right, life was pleasurable in every cell. Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the puppy-fat of your thighs, or the slick chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I remember your extraordinary act of courage in loving me, something no one but the blind and halt had done before. You were fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could fall asleep at the wheel easily and never know it, each blond hair of your head -- and they were thickly laid -- put out like a filament of light, twenty years ago. The Charles still slides by with that ease as your d**h was hard, wanted all things broken and rigid as the bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me stopped cell by cell in your young body, Ave -- I went ahead and had the children, the life of ease and faithfulness, the palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body. I took the road we stood on at the start together, I took it all without you as if in taking it after all I could most honor you.