“Explain my life to me, you who make no sign,
though I call out to you in the night:
I am not like you, I have only
my body for a voice; I can’t
disappear into silence—
And in the cold morning
over the dark surface of the earth
echoes of my voice drift,
whiteness steadily absorbed into darkness
as though you were making a sign after all
to convince me you too couldn’t survive here
or to show me you are not the light I called to
but the blackness behind it.”
― Louise Glück, The Wild Iris
