At the end of my suffering <br />there was a door. <br /> <br />Hear me out: that which you call death <br />I remember. <br /> <br />Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. <br />Then nothing. The weak sun <br />flickered over the dry surface. <br /> <br />It is terrible to survive <br />as consciousness <br />buried in the dark earth. <br /> <br />Then it was over: that which you fear, being <br />a soul and unable <br />to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth <br />bending a little. And what I took to be <br />birds darting in low shrubs. <br /> <br />You who do not remember <br />passage from the other world <br />I tell you I could speak again: whatever <br />returns from oblivion returns <br />to find a voice: <br /> <br />from the center of my life came <br />a great fountain, deep blue <br />shadows on azure seawater.<br /><br />Louise Gluck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wild-iris/
