Sequestered Writing

　　by Carolyn Forché

　　 Horses were turned loose in the child's sorrow. Black and roan， cantering through snow.

　　 The way light fills the hand with light， November with graves， infancy with white.

　　 White. Given lilacs， lilacs disappear. Then low voices rising in walls.

　　 The way they withdrew from the child's body and spoke as if it were not there.

　　 What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You？

　　 -- With its no one without its I --

　　 A dwarf ghost？ A closet of empty clothes？

　　 Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.

　　 Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.

　　 At the end of the hall， it sleepwalks into a mirror wearing mother's robe.

　　 A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face. Come here.

　　 The bookcase knows， and also the darkness of books. Long passages into，

　　 Endless histories toward， sleeping pages about. Why else toss gloves into a grave？

　　 A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it came.

　　 Words holding the scent of an asylum fifty years. It is fifty years， then.

　　 The child hears from within： Come here and know， below

　　 And unbeknownst to us， what these fields had been.

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