Yahrzeit + Mitvakh

or

What Hope of Answer or Redress/

Behind the Veil, Behind the Veil!

Tennyson. As my brother suggested half-kidding, perhaps I'd have been better off not reading something personally meaningful. At any rate:

XIV

If one should bring me this report,

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,

And I went down unto the quay,

And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,

Should see thy passengers in rank

Come stepping lightly down the plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come

The man I held as half-divine;

Should strike a sudden hand in mine,

And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late,

And he should sorrow o'er my state

And marvel what possess'd my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change,

No hint of death in all his frame,

But found him all in all the same,

I should not feel it to be strange.

No, not strange. I have those dreams (the most poignant part of reading Freud, to me: how kind our dreams are). Waking is strange.