Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  Because of the long and unceasing care that was lavished upon it, and also because the soil was enriched by the decomposing head inside the pot, the basil grew very thick and exceedingly fragrant. The young woman constantly followed this same routine, and from time to time she attracted the attention of her neighbours. And as they had heard her brothers expressing their concern at the decline in her good looks and the way in which her eyes appeared to have sunk into their sockets, they told them what they had seen, adding: ‘We have noticed that she follows the same routine every day.’ The brothers discovered for themselves that this was so, and having reproached her once or twice without the slightest effect, they caused the pot to be secretly removed from her room. When she found that it was missing, she kept asking for it over and over again, and because they would not restore it to her she sobbed and cried without a pause until eventually she fell seriously ill. And from her bed of sickness she would call for nothing else except her pot of basil. The young men were astonished by the persistence of her entreaties, and decided to examine its contents. Having shaken out the soil, they saw the cloth and found the decomposing head inside it, still sufficiently intact for them to recognize it as Lorenzo’s from the curls of his hair. This discovery greatly amazed them, and they were afraid lest people should come to know what had happened. So they buried the head, and without breathing a word to anyone, having wound up their affairs in Messina, they left the city and went to live in Naples. The girl went on weeping and demanding her pot of basil, until eventually she cried herself to death, thus bringing her ill-fated love to an end. But after due process of time, many people came to know of the affair, and one of them composed the song which can still be heard to this day: Whoever it was, Whoever the villain That stole my pot of herbs, etc. SIXTH STORYAndreuola loves Gabriotto. She tells him of a dream she has had, and he tells her of another. He dies suddenly in her arms, and whilst she and a maidservant of hers are carrying him back to his own house, they are arrested by the officers of the watch. She explains how matters stand, and the chief magistrate attempts to ravish her, but she wards him off. Her father is informed, her innocence is established, and he secures her release. Being determined not to go on living in the world, she enters a nunnery.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Ah, Lisabetta, you do nothing but call to me and bemoan my long absence, and you cruelly reprove me with your tears. Hence I must tell you that I can never return, because on the day that you saw me for the last time, I was murdered by your brothers.’ He then described the place where they had buried him, told her not to call to him or wait for him any longer, and disappeared. Having woken up, believing that what she had seen was true, the young woman wept bitterly. And when she arose next morning, she resolved to go to the place and seek confirmation of what she had seen in her sleep. She dared not mention the apparition to her brothers, but obtained their permission to make a brief trip to the country for pleasure, taking with her a maidservant who had once acted as her go-between and was privy to all her affairs. She immediately set out, and on reaching the spot, swept aside some dead leaves and started to excavate a section of the ground that appeared to have been disturbed. Nor did she have to dig very deep before she uncovered her poor lover’s body, which, showing no sign as yet of decomposition or decay, proved all too clearly that her vision had been true. She was the saddest woman alive, but knowing that this was no time for weeping, and seeing that it was impossible for her to take away his whole body (as she would dearly have wished), she laid it to rest in a more appropriate spot, then severed the head from the shoulders as best she could and enveloped it in a towel. This she handed into her maidservant’s keeping whilst she covered over the remainder of the corpse with soil, and then they returned home, having completed the whole of their task unobserved. Taking the head to her room, she locked herself in and cried bitterly, weeping so profusely that she saturated it with her tears, at the same time implanting a thousand kisses upon it. Then she wrapped the head in a piece of rich cloth, and laid it in a large and elegant pot, of the sort in which basil or marjoram is grown. She next covered it with soil, in which she planted several sprigs of the finest Salemitan basil,3 and never watered them except with essence of roses or orange-blossom, or with her own teardrops. She took to sitting permanently beside this pot and gazing lovingly at it, concentrating the whole of her desire upon it because it was where her beloved Lorenzo lay concealed. And after gazing raptly for a long while upon it, she would bend over it and begin to cry, and her weeping never ceased until the whole of the basil was wet with her tears.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  She never went out except for work or to do errands he had specifically approved. He watched and marked her every step, her every word. In those times there were no domestic abuse shelters. If either my mother or I had been brave enough to report him, the authorities would have accepted his word over ours because he was an employed white man. We would have been forced back with no protection, and he would have been given tacit permission to keep us in line. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] I never heard my mother sing much anymore. Her singing used to fill the house. We would turn up the radio and dance to rock-and-roll together. Our house now was quiet with our labor to keep it in order. My sister and I had the bulk of the duties, because we were female. I was in charge of cleaning, doing laundry, including the ironing for the family, washing dishes, and child care. Our brothers emptied the trash and mowed the lawn. I tried making a case for rotating duties. I didn’t feel it was a fair distribution. There was no negotiating. Our mother worked hard and long hours in restaurants, either cooking or waitressing or both. Our stepfather contributed only his share of the mortgage. Our mother paid for everything else. She bought all groceries, food, and clothes. Our father could not be found for child support. The last and only time I saw my mother sing publicly was shortly after she and my stepfather got together. Leon McAuliffe and His Cimarron Boys were gigging at a huge community picnic near the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma, not far from where my mother grew up. McAuliffe was known for his steel guitar solos, especially for playing with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. That McAuliffe had agreed to let my mother sit in for one of her original songs was a big deal. This had been her life. The bandleader Ernie Fields had even arranged one of her songs for his orchestra. There was tension in the car as my stepfather drove us the two hours to the event. My mother sat up front with him, the four of us children crowded in the back. She was nervous. She hadn’t sung with a band for a few years. She was dressed for her musical coming-out party in satin, frills, and perfume. My stepfather was already jealous and ready to go at someone because his wife, who was younger than he was, looked so pretty. She didn’t look like a jailed, beleaguered mother of four children. I was wary, because I knew our stepfather would make her pay. My grandfather—my mother’s father—met us there. I sat next to him as I balanced my box of greasy fried chicken on my lap. I was nervous for my mother. I embodied her every emotional knot and fear. I wanted this opportunity to be good for her.

• From Trash (1988)

  I remember going home for the service one of the local drug counselors organized. People were standing around talking about the shame and the waste, and Katy’s mama slapped my hand when I touched her accidentally. “It should have been you,” she’d hissed. “Any one of you, it should have been. Not Katy.” Her eyes had been flat and dry. She hadn’t cried at all, and neither had I. I spent that night in my mama’s kitchen, talking long-distance to my lover up North about how everybody had looked, and the way Katy’s last boyfriend had glared at me from beside his parole officer. I’d hugged the phone to my ear, that yellow cowboy shirt between my fists, wringing it until I was shredding the yoke, pulling the snaps off, ripping the seams. I’d torn that shirt apart, talked for hours, but never gotten around to crying. I didn’t cry until months later in the Women’s Center bathroom. I’d been stone sober, but I was standing up to piss, my knees slightly bent, my jeans down around my ankles, my head turned to the side so I could see myself in the mirror. It was the way Katy had insisted we piss when we went road-tripping. “You’re the dyke,” she’d always said. “Keep your health. Learn to piss like a boy and keep your butt dry.” “Piss like a boy,” I’d whispered into the mirror, into Katy’s painful memory. And just that easy her face was there, her full swollen mouth mocking me, whispering back, “Like a dyke. You the dyke here, girl. I sure an’t.” So then I’d cried, sobbed and cried, and beaten on that mirror with my fists until the women outside came to try and see what was going on. I’d shut up, washed my face, and told them nothing. What could I tell them, anyway? My ghost lover just came back and made me piss all over my jeans. My ghost lover is haunting me, and the trick is I am glad to see her. Katy hands me the joint again, moving her small hands delicately. She smiles when she sees where my glance is trained. She flexes her fist, opens the fingers, and wags them in front of my nose. I laugh and take the joint again. “I loved that shirt. It was the best present you ever got me.” “You forgetting those black gloves with the rhinestones on the back I got in that shop on Peachtree Street. We always got the best stuff in Atlanta. Didn’t we?” “You just about got us busted in Atlanta.” “Oh hell, you were just a nervous Nellie. Thought you were the only woman capable of sleight of hand. You just never trusted me, girl.” “You were always so stoned. You did stupid things.”

• From Trash (1988)

  At thirty, Arlene had a little girl’s shadowed frightened face and the omnipresent stink of whiskey on her skin. I had been eight when Mama married Jack, Jo five, but Arlene had been still a baby, less than a year old and fragile as a sparrow in the air. “What is it you want to do? Talk? Huh?” Jo rolled her shoulders back and rubbed her upper arms. “Want to talk about what a tower of strength Mama was? Or why she had to be?” My shrug was automatic, inconsequential. A flush spread up from Jo’s cleavage. It made the skin of her neck look rough and pebbly. Deep lines scored the corners of her eyes and curved back from her mouth. In the last few years, Jo had become scary thin. The skin that always pulled tight on her bones seemed to have grown loose. Now it wrinkled and hung. I looked away, surprised and angry. Neither of us had expected to live long enough to get old. For all that we fight, Jo is the one I get along with, and I always try to stay with her when I visit. Arlene and I barely speak, though we talk to each other more easily than she and Jo. There have been years I don’t think the two of them have spoken half a dozen words. In the ten weeks since Mama’s collapse, their conversations have been hurt-filled bursts of whispered recrimination. At first, I stayed with Arlene and that seemed to help, but when Jo and I insisted that Mama had to check in to MacArthur, Arlene blew up and told me to go ahead and move over to Jo’s place. “You and Jo—you think you know it all,” Arlene said when she was dropping me off at Jo’s. “But she’s my mama too, and I know something. I know she’s not ready to give up and die.” “We’re not giving up. We’re putting Mama where she can get the best care.” “Two miles from Jo’s place and forty from mine.” Arlene had shaken her head. “All the way across town from Jack and her stuff. I know what you are doing.” “Arlene . . .” “Don’t. Just don’t.” She popped the clutch on her VW bug and backed up before I could get the door closed. “Someday you’re gonna be sorry. That’s the one thing I am sure of, you’re gonna be sorry for all you’ve done.” She swung the car sharply to the side, making the door swing shut.

• From Trash (1988)

  The woman turned to her, a momentary look of confusion on her face. “You do?” “Oh yes, there is no fighting what is meant. When God puts his hand on you, well . . .” Mama shrugged as if there were no need to say more. The woman hesitated, and then nodded, “Yes. God has a plan for us all.” “Yes.” Mama nodded. “Yes.” She reached over and put both hands on the woman’s clasped palms. “Bless you.” Mama beamed. This time the woman did frown. She didn’t know whether Mama was making fun of her, but she knew something was wrong. Her friend looked nervous. “Just let me ask you something.” Mama pulled the woman’s hands toward her own midriff, drawing the woman slightly off balance and making her reach across the pile of underpants. “Have you had cancer yet?” The words were spoken in the softest matron’s drawl but they cut the air like a razor. “Oh!” the woman said. Mama smiled. Her smile relaxed, full of enjoyment. “It an’t good news. But it is definite. You know something after, how everything can change in an instant. ” The woman’s eyes were fixed and dilated. “Oh! God is a rock,” she whispered. “Yes.” Mama’s smile was too wide. “And Demerol.” She paused while the woman’s mouth worked as if she were going to protest, but could not. “And sleep,” Mama added that as it had just occurred to her. She nodded again. “Yes. God is Demerol and sleep and not vomiting when that’s all you’ve done for days. Oh, yes. God is more than I think you have yet imagined. It’s not like we get to choose what comes, after all.” “Mama,” I said. “Please, Mama.” Mama leaned over so that her face was close to the woman’s chin and spoke in a tightly parsed whisper. “God is your daughter holding your hand when you can’t stand the smell of your own body. God is your husband not yelling, your insurance check coming when they said it would.” She leaned so close to the woman’s face, it looked as if she were about to kiss her, still holding on to both the woman’s hands. “God is any minute pain is not eating you up alive, any breath that doesn’t come out in a wheeze.” The woman’s eyes were wide, still unblinking; the determined mouth clamped shut. “I know God.” Mama assumed her old soft drawl. “I know God and the devil and everything in between. Oh yes. Yes.” The last word was fierce, not angry but final. When she let go, I watched the woman fall back against her friend. The two of them turned to walk fast and straight away from us, leaving their selections on the table. I felt almost sorry for them.

• From Trash (1988)

  We put it in our eyes, in our noses. Son of a bitch even shoved it up my ass.” She crushes the joint out on the bedframe. She is smiling and relaxed now, very beautiful even though I am getting angry. Mickey was the one took her to California after I ran off. Mickey was the one who got her back on junk, left her in the motel room where she overdosed. Mickey was the one threatened me at her memorial service, with his parole officer standing right there sweating in the heat. Mickey was the one I’d told to try it. Come for me, asshole, and I’ll cut off your balls and push them up your butt. The parole officer had smiled, and my sweat had turned cold on my back. That wasn’t like me, wasn’t the kind of thing I’d say. It wasn’t even the thing I’d been thinking. It was as if Katy had pushed the words out of my mouth. It was exactly the kind of thing Katy would have said. But Mickey had overdosed himself at Raiford, and I’d never seen any of Katy’s boyfriends again. Just Katy, anytime she gets restless and wants to come back. I look at her now and my throat closes up. I cannot make casual conversation, cannot talk at all. I want to reach for her but I am too afraid. She is the vampire curse in my life. You have to invite them back, and part of me always wants her, even when most of me don’t. Right now all of me wants her, flesh and blood, body and soul. Katy’s thick black eyebrows raise and lower, seeing right through me, seeing my grief and my lust. “Ahhh, bitch,” she whispers, and it sounds like lover. She slips one hand under the sheet and strokes her nails along my leg. I catch my breath. I could cry but don’t. Will we be lovers again? Is she real enough this moment to put her filmy body along my too-tight muscles? She wants to; it shows in the unaccustomed softness in her face. I feel tears run down my cheeks. Now she says it. “Lover.” “Junkie.” I hiss it at her, beginning to really cry, making a hoarse ugly sound in the quiet room. “Goddamn you, you goddamned junkie!” “Ahh well,” she drawls, her fingers still stroking my leg. “It’s not a lie.” She drags herself over, rocking the bed this time, sliding under the sheet. She arranges her body to cup my side, her toes touch my ankle and her head turns so that her mouth is close to my ear. “Not a lie, no.” One hand caresses my stomach; the other hugs my hipbone. “Goddamn you!” I try to lie still but start shaking. “Don’t be boring,” she says.

• From Trash (1988)

  They set off from Greenville in the afternoon, hoping to make Oklahoma by the weekend, but they only got as far as Augusta. The bridge there went out under them. “An Act of God,” my uncle said. My aunt and Cora crawled out downriver, and two of the girls turned up in the weeds, screaming loud enough to be found in the dark. But one of the girls never came up out of that dark water, and Nancy, who had been holding Cy, was found still wrapped around the baby, in the water, under the car. “An Act of God,” my aunt said. “God’s got one damn sick sense of humor.” My sister had her baby in a bad year. Before he was born we had talked about it. “Are you afraid?” I asked. “He’ll be fine,” she’d replied, not understanding, speaking instead to the other fear. “Don’t we have a tradition of bastards?” He was fine, a classically ugly healthy little boy with that shock of white hair that marked so many of us. But afterward, it was that bad year with my sister down with pleurisy, then cystitis, and no work, no money, having to move back home with my cold-eyed stepfather. I would come home to see her, from the woman I could not admit I’d been with, and take my infinitely fragile nephew and hold him, rocking him, rocking myself. One night I came home to screaming—the baby, my sister, no one else there. She was standing by the crib, bent over, screaming red-faced. “Shut up! Shut up!” With each word her fist slammed the mattress fanning the baby’s ear. “Don’t!” I grabbed her, pulling her back, doing it as gently as I could so I wouldn’t break the stitches from her operation. She had her other arm clamped across her abdomen and couldn’t fight me at all. She just kept shrieking. “That little bastard just screams and screams. That little bastard. I’ll kill him.” Then the words seeped in and she looked at me while her son kept crying and kicking his feet. By his head the mattress still showed the impact of her fist. “Oh no,” she moaned, “I wasn’t going to be like that. I always promised myself.” She started to cry, holding her belly and sobbing. “We an’t no different. We an’t no different.” Jesse wraps her arm around my stomach, presses her belly into my back. I relax against her. “You sure you can’t have children?” she asks. “I sure would like to see what your kids would turn out to be like.” I stiffen, say, “I can’t have children. I’ve never wanted children.” “Still,” she says, “you’re so good with children, so gentle.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I know my error now; Not without grief, I vow. ‘I comprehend that false deceit And see how, while I thought that she Seemed to allow my love, she’d found Another servant, spurning me. Ah, then I could not see My future misery! But she the other took And me for him forsook. ‘A mournful song swelled through my heart When I perceived that I was spurned, That dwells there still; and oft I curse Faith, hope, love and the hour I learned Her noble beauteousness Whose radiance doth oppress My dying soul, which yet Cannot those charms forget. ‘Bereft of every comfort now, Oh, Lord of love, to you I cry; I burn with such a torment here That for a less I’d crave to die. Come Death, then, end my life With all its cruel strife; Strike down my misery! I shall the better be. ‘No other way nor other ease Remains to soothe my grief but death. Grant me this, Love, and end my woes; Take from me now my wretched breath. All joy is gone from me, No pleasure’s left for me; Make then my death content her As the new love you sent her. ‘My song, if none should learn to sing Thee over, I take little care; No one can sing thee as I can. Only, to Love one message bear: Beg him, since life was all Loathsome to me, and vile, To safer haven take Me for his honour’s sake.’ Filostrato’s mood, and the reason, were made abundantly clear by the words of his song. And perhaps the face of one of the ladies dancing1 would have clarified the matter still further if the shades of darkness, which had meanwhile descended, had not concealed the blush which spread across her cheeks as he was singing. Many other songs followed, until finally it was time for them to go to bed, whereupon, by the queen’s command, they all retired to their rooms. Here ends the Fourth Day of the Decameron [image file=image_rsrc82M.jpg] FIFTH DAYHere begins the Fifth Day, wherein, under the rule of Fiam-metta, are discussed the adventures of lovers who survived calamities or misfortunes and attained a state of happiness.

• From Trash (1988)

  I remembered then the last child she had borne, a tiny girl with a heart that fluttered with every breath, a baby for whom the doctors said nothing could be done, a baby they swore wouldn’t see six months. Aunt Alma had kept her in an okra basket and carried her everywhere, talking to her one minute like a kitten or a doll and the next minute like a grown woman. Annie had lived to be four, never outgrowing the vegetable basket, never talking back, just lying there and smiling like a wise old woman, dying between a smile and a laugh while Aunt Alma never interrupted the story that had almost made Annie laugh. I sipped my beer and watched my aunt’s unchanging face. Very slowly she swung the pool cue up and down, not quite touching the table. After a moment she stepped in again and leaned half her weight on the table. The five ball became a bird murdered in flight, dropping suddenly into the far right pocket. Aunt Alma laughed out loud, delighted. “Never lost it,” she crowed. “Four years in the roadhouse with that table set up in the back. Every one of them sons of mine thought he was going to make money on it. Lord, those boys! Never made a cent.” She swallowed the rest of her glass of water. “But me,” she wiped the sweat away again. “I never would have done it for money. I just loved it. Never went home without playing myself three or four games. Sometimes I’d set Annie up on the side and we’d pretend we were playing. I’d tell her when I was taking her shots. And she’d shout when I’d sink ’em. I let her win most every time.” She stopped, put both hands on the table, and closed her eyes. “ ’Course, just after we lost her, we lost the roadhouse.” She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Never did have anything fine that I didn’t lose.” The room was still, dust glinted in the sunlight past her ears. She opened her eyes and looked directly at me. “I don’t care,” she began slowly, softly. “I don’t care if you’re queer or not. I don’t care if you take puppy dogs to bed, for that matter, but your mother was all my heart for twenty years when nobody else cared what happened to me. She stood by me. I’ve stood by her and I always thought to do the same for you and yours. But she’s sitting there, did you know that? She’s sitting there like nothing’s left of her life, like . . . like she hates her life and won’t say shit to nobody about it. She wouldn’t tell me. She won’t tell me what it is, what has happened.” I sat the can down on the stool, closed my own eyes, and dropped my head. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want her to be there.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He had meanwhile enlisted the aid of some trusted companions for his enterprise, and in the dead of night, having let them into the house, he led them to the place where Pericone and the woman were sleeping. Entering the room, they killed Pericone in his sleep and seized the lady, who woke up and started to cry, threatening her with death if she made any noise. Then, taking with them a considerable quantity of Pericone’s most precious possessions, they departed without being heard and made their way to the quayside, where Marato boarded the ship with the lady, leaving his companions to go their separate ways. The ship’s crew, taking advantage of a strong and favourable wind, cast off and sailed swiftly away. The lady was sorely distressed by this second catastrophe, coming as it did so soon after the first. But Marato, with the Heaven-sent assistance of Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand,7 began consoling her to such good effect that she soon returned his affection and forgot all about Pericone. She had hardly begun to feel settled, however, before Fortune, not content, it seemed, with her previous handiwork, engineered yet another calamity. As we have almost grown tired of repeating, the woman had the body of an angel and a temperament to match, and the two young masters of the vessel fell so violently in love with her that they could concentrate on nothing else except how best they might make themselves useful and agreeable to her, at the same time taking care not to let Marato see what they were up to. On discovering that they were both in love with the same woman, they talked the matter over in secret and agreed to make the lady’s conquest a mutual affair, as though love were capable of being shared out like merchandise or profits. For some time their plans were thwarted because they found that Marato kept a close watch on her. But one day, when the ship was sailing along like the wind and Marato was standing on the stern facing seaward without the least suspicion of their intentions, they both crept up on him, seized him quickly from behind, and hurled him into the sea. By the time anybody so much as noticed that Marato had fallen overboard, they had already sailed on for over a mile, and the lady, hearing what had happened and seeing no way of going to his rescue, began to fill the whole ship with the sounds of her latest affliction.

• From Carmina (-50)

  Quod mihi fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo conscriptum hoc lacrimis mittis epistolium, naufragum ut eiectum spumantibus aequoris undis subleuem et a mortis limine restituam, quem neque sancta Venus molli requiescere somno 5 desertum in lecto caelibe perpetitur, nec ueterum dulci scriptorum carmine Musae oblectant, cum mens anxia peruigilat: id gratum est mihi, me quoniam tibi dicis amicum, muneraque et Musarum hinc petis et Veneris: 10 sed tibi ne mea sint ignota incommoda, Malli, neu me odisse putes hospitis officium, accipe, quis merser fortunae fluctibus ipse, ne amplius a misero dona beata petas. tempore quo primum uestis mihi tradita pura est, 15 iucundum cum aetas florida uer ageret, multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri, quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem: sed totum hoc studium luctu fraterna mihi mors abstulit. o misero frater adempte mihi, 20 tu mea tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater, tecum una tota est nostra sepulta domus, omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra, quae tuus in uita dulcis alebat amor. cuius ego interitu tota de mente fugaui 25 haec studia atque omnis delicias animi. quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo esse, quod hic quisquis de meliore nota frigida deserto tepefacsit membra cubili, id, Malli, non est turpe, magis miserum est. 30 ignosces igitur, si, quae mihi luctus ademit, haec tibi non tribuo munera, cum nequeo. nam, quod scriptorum non magna est copia apud me, hoc fit, quod Romae uiuimus: illa domus, illa mihi sedes, illic mea carpitur aetas: 35 huc una ex multis capsula me sequitur. quod cum ita sit, nolim statuas nos mente maligna id facere aut animo non satis ingenuo, quod tibi non utriusque petenti copia posta est: ultro ego deferrem, copia siqua foret. 40 * Non possum reticere, deae, qua me Allius in re iuuerit aut quantis iuuerit officiis, ne fugiens saeclis obliuiscentibus aetas illius hoc caeca nocte tegat studium: sed dicam uobis, uos porro dicite multis 45 milibus et facite haec carta loquatur anus. . . . . . . . . notescatque magis mortuus atque magis, nec tenuem texens sublimis aranea telam in deserto Alli nomine opus faciat. 50 nam, mihi quam dederit duplex Amathusia curam, scitis, et in quo me corruerit genere, cum tantum arderem quantum Trinacria rupes lymphaque in Oetaeis Malia Thermopylis, maesta neque assiduo tabescere pupula fletu 55 cessaret tristique imbre madere genae. qualis in aerei perlucens uertice montis riuus muscoso prosilit e lapide, qui cum de prona praeceps est ualle uolutus, per medium densi transit iter populi, 60 dulce uiatori lasso in sudore leuamen, cum grauis exustos aestus hiulcat agros: hic, uelut in nigro iactatis turbine nautis lenius aspirans aura secunda uenit iam prece Pollucis, iam Castoris implorata, 65 tale fuit nobis Allius auxilium. is clausum lato patefecit limite campum, isque domum nobis isque dedit dominam, ad quam communes exerceremus amores. quo mea se molli candida diua pede 70 intulit et trito fulgentem in limine plantam innixsa arguta constituit solea. coniugis ut quondam flagrans aduenit amore Protesilaeam Laudamia domum inceptam frustra, nondum cum sanguine sacro 75 hostia caelestis pacificasset heros.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Nothing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart; in this respect, my father has acted wisely.’ Having spoken these words, she raised it to her lips and kissed it, then continued: ‘Throughout my life, which is now approaching its end, I have had constant reminders of my father’s devoted love, but never so patent a token as this. And in thanking him for the last time, I bid you tell him how grateful I was for so priceless a gift.’ Then she turned to the chalice, which she was holding firmly in her two hands, and gazing down upon Guiscardo’s heart, she said: ‘Ah! dear, sweet vessel of all my joys, cursed be the cruelty of him who has compelled me to see you with the eyes of my body, when it was enough that I should keep you constantly in the eyes of my mind! Your life has run the brief course allotted to it by Fortune, you have reached the end to which all men hasten, and in leaving behind the trials and tribulations of our mortal life, you have received at the hands of your enemy a burial worthy of your excellence. Your funeral rites lacked nothing but the tears of the woman you loved so dearly; but so that you should not be without them, God impelled my pitiless father to send you to me, and I shall cry for you even though I had resolved to die with tearless eyes and features unclouded by fear. And the instant my tears are finished I shall see that my soul is united with that other soul which you kept in your loving care. How could I wish for a better or surer companion as I set forth towards the unknown? I feel certain that his soul still lingers here within you, waiting for mine and surveying the scenes of our mutual happiness, and that our love for one another is as deep and enduring as ever.’ She said no more, but leaned over the chalice, suppressing all sound of womanly grief, and began to cry in a fashion wondrous to behold, her tears gushing forth like water from a fountain; and she implanted countless kisses upon the lifeless heart. Her ladies-in-waiting, by whom she was surrounded, were at a loss to know what heart this was, nor were they able to make any sense of her words, but they too began to cry in unison, being filled with compassion for their mistress. They pleaded with her to explain why she was weeping, but to no avail; and for all their strenuous efforts, they were unable to console her. But when she had cried as much as she deemed sufficient, she raised her head from the chalice, and after drying her eyes, she said:

• From Trash (1988)

  I am my mama’s daughter, her shadow on the earth, the blood thinned down a little so that I am not as powerful as she, as immune to want and desire. I am not a mountain or a cave, a force of nature or a power on the earth, but I have her talent for not seeing what I cannot stand to face. I make sure that I do not want what I do not think I can have, and I keep clearly in mind what it is I cannot have. I roll in the night all the stories I never told her, cannot tell her still—her voice in my brain echoing love and despair and grief and rage. When, in the night, she hears me call her name, it is not really me she hears, it is the me I constructed for her—the one who does not need her too much, the one whose heart is not too tender, whose insides are iron and silver, whose dreams are cold ice and slate—who needs nothing, nothing. I keep in mind the image of a closed door, Mama weeping on the other side. She could not rescue me. I cannot rescue her. Sometimes I cannot even reach across the wall that separates us. On my stepfather’s birthday I make coffee and bake bread pudding with bourbon sauce. I invite friends over, tell outrageous stories, and use horrible words. I scratch my scars and hug my lover, thinking about Mama twelve states away. My accent comes back and my weight settles down lower, until the ache in my spine is steady and hot. I remember Mama sitting at the kitchen table in the early morning, tears in her eyes, lying to me and my sister, promising us that the time would come when she would leave him—that as soon as we were older, as soon as there was a little more money put by and things were a little easier—she would go. I think about her sitting there now, waiting for him to wake up and want his coffee, for the day to start moving around her, things to get so busy she won’t have to think. Sometimes, I hate my mama. Sometimes, I hate myself. I see myself in her, and her in me. I see us too clearly sometimes, all the little betrayals that cannot be forgotten or changed. When Mama calls, I wait a little before speaking. “Mama,” I say, “I knew you would call.” Gospel Song

• From Trash (1988)

  I sipped my beer and watched my aunt’s unchanging face. Very slowly she swung the pool cue up and down, not quite touching the table. After a moment she stepped in again and leaned half her weight on the table. The five ball became a bird murdered in flight, dropping suddenly into the far right pocket. Aunt Alma laughed out loud, delighted. “Never lost it,” she crowed. “Four years in the roadhouse with that table set up in the back. Every one of them sons of mine thought he was going to make money on it. Lord, those boys! Never made a cent.” She swallowed the rest of her glass of water. “But me,” she wiped the sweat away again. “I never would have done it for money. I just loved it. Never went home without playing myself three or four games. Sometimes I’d set Annie up on the side and we’d pretend we were playing. I’d tell her when I was taking her shots. And she’d shout when I’d sink ’em. I let her win most every time.” She stopped, put both hands on the table, and closed her eyes. “ ’Course, just after we lost her, we lost the roadhouse.” She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Never did have anything fine that I didn’t lose.” The room was still, dust glinted in the sunlight past her ears. She opened her eyes and looked directly at me. “I don’t care,” she began slowly, softly. “I don’t care if you’re queer or not. I don’t care if you take puppy dogs to bed, for that matter, but your mother was all my heart for twenty years when nobody else cared what happened to me. She stood by me. I’ve stood by her and I always thought to do the same for you and yours. But she’s sitting there, did you know that? She’s sitting there like nothing’s left of her life, like . . . like she hates her life and won’t say shit to nobody about it. She wouldn’t tell me. She won’t tell me what it is, what has happened.” I sat the can down on the stool, closed my own eyes, and dropped my head. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want her to be there. I wanted her to go away, disappear out of my life the way I’d run out of hers. Go away, old woman. Leave me alone. Don’t talk to me. Don’t tell me your stories. I an’t a baby in a basket, and I can’t lie still for it.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  For a long time now, the fair lady had been a plaything in the hands of Fortune, but the moment was approaching when her trials would be over. When she espied Antigono, she recalled having seen him in Alexandria, where he once occupied a position of some importance in her father’s service. Knowing that her merchant was away, and being suddenly filled with the hope that there might be some possibility of returning once more to her regal status with the help of this man’s advice, she sent for him at the earliest opportunity. When he called upon her, she shyly asked whether she was right in thinking him to be Antigono of Famagusta. Antigono said that he was, adding: ‘I have an idea, ma’am, that I have seen you before, but I cannot for the life of me remember where. Pray be good enough, therefore, if you have no objection, to remind me who you are.’ On hearing that this was indeed the man she had assumed him to be, the lady burst into tears and threw her arms round his neck, and presently she asked her highly astonished visitor whether he had ever seen her in Alexandria. No sooner had she put the question than Antigono recognized her as the Sultan’s daughter Alatiel, whom everybody believed to be drowned at sea, and he prepared to make her the ceremonial bow that was her due. But she would not allow this and asked him instead to come and sit down with her for a while. Complying, Antigono asked her in reverential tones how, when and whence she had come to Cyprus, and told her that the whole Egyptian nation had been convinced, for many years, that she had been drowned at sea. ‘I wish to goodness they were right,’ said the lady, ‘and I think my father would share my opinion if he were ever to discover the sort of life I have led.’ And so saying, she started crying prodigiously all over again, whereupon Antigono said to her: ‘My lady, it is too soon for you to go upsetting yourself like this. Tell me about your misfortunes, if you like, and about the life you have been living. Possibly we shall find that the point has been reached where we shall be able, with God’s help, to devise some happy outcome to your dilemma.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It had once been customary, as it is again nowadays, for the women relatives and neighbours of a dead man to assemble in his house in order to mourn in the company of the women who had been closest to him; moreover his kinsfolk would forgather in front of his house along with his neighbours and various other citizens, and there would be a contingent of priests, whose numbers varied according to the quality of the deceased; his body would be taken thence to the church in which he had wanted to be buried, being borne on the shoulders of his peers amidst the funeral pomp of candles and dirges. But as the ferocity of the plague began to mount, this practice all but disappeared entirely and was replaced by different customs. For not only did people die without having many women about them, but a great number departed this life without anyone at all to witness their going. Few indeed were those to whom the lamentations and bitter tears of their relatives were accorded; on the contrary, more often than not bereavement was the signal for laughter and witticisms and general jollification – the art of which the women, having for the most part suppressed their feminine concern for the salvation of the souls of the dead, had learned to perfection. Moreover it was rare for the bodies of the dead to be accompanied by more than ten or twelve neighbours to the church, nor were they borne on the shoulders of worthy and honest citizens, but by a kind of gravedigging fraternity, newly come into being and drawn from the lower orders of society. These people assumed the title of sexton, and demanded a fat fee for their services, which consisted in taking up the coffin and hauling it swiftly away, not to the church specified by the dead man in his will, but usually to the nearest at hand. They would be preceded by a group of four or six clerics, who between them carried one or two candles at most, and sometimes none at all. Nor did the priests go to the trouble of pronouncing solemn and lengthy funeral rites, but, with the aid of these so-called sextons, they hastily lowered the body into the nearest empty grave they could find.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then she herself led the way to the study, walking steadily, just as though nothing had happened, just as though when she got there she would find her father lolling back in his arm-chair, reading. But she thought all the while: ‘He’s dying—my Father—’ Only the thought seemed unreal, preposterous. It seemed like the thinking of somebody else, a thing so unreal as to be preposterous. Yet when they had set him down in the study, her own voice it was that she heard giving orders. ‘Tell Miss Puddleton to go at once to my Mother and break the news gently—I’ll stay with Sir Philip. One of you please send a housemaid to me with a sponge and some towels and a basin of cold water. Burton’s gone for Doctor Evans, you say? That’s quite right. Now I’d like you to go up and fetch down a mattress, the one from the blue room will do—get it quickly. Bring some blankets as well and a couple of pillows—and I may need a little brandy.’ They ran to obey, and before very long she had helped to lift him on to the mattress. He groaned a little, then he actually smiled as he felt her strong arms around him. She kept wiping the blood away from his mouth, and her fingers were stained; she looked at her fingers, but without comprehension—they could not be hers—like her thoughts, they must surely be somebody else’s. But now his eyes were growing more restless—he was looking for some one, he was looking for her mother. ‘Have you told Miss Puddleton, Williams?’ she whispered. The man nodded. Then she said: ‘Mother’s coming, darling; you lie still,’ and her voice was softly persuasive as though she were speaking to a small, suffering child. ‘Mother’s coming; you lie quite still, darling.’ And she came—incredulous, yet wide-eyed with horror. ‘Philip, oh, Philip!’ She sank down beside him and laid her white face against his on the pillow. ‘My dear, my dear—it’s most terribly hurt you—try to tell me where it hurts; try to tell me, belovèd. The branch gave—it was the snow—it fell on you, Philip—but try to tell me where it hurts most, belovèd.’ Stephen motioned to the servants and they went away slowly with bowed heads, for Sir Philip had been a good friend; they loved him, each in his or her way, each according to his or her capacity for loving. And always that terrible voice went on speaking, terrible because it was quite unlike Anna’s—it was toneless, and it asked and re-asked the same question: ‘Try to tell me where it hurts most, belovèd.’ But Sir Philip was fighting the battle of pain; of intense, irresistible, unmanning pain. He lay silent, not answering Anna. Then she coaxed him in words soft with memories of her country. ‘And you the loveliest man,’ she whispered, ‘and you with the light of God in your eyes.’ But he lay there unable to answer.

• From Trash (1988)

  In time I understood my mama to be a kind of Zen Baptist—rooting desire out of her own heart as ruthlessly as any mountaintop ascetic. The lessons Mama taught me and the lessons of Buddha were not a matter of degree, but of despair. My mama’s philosophy was bitter and thin. She didn’t give a damn if she was ever born again, she just didn’t want to be born again poor and wanting. I am my mama’s daughter, her shadow on the earth, the blood thinned down a little so that I am not as powerful as she, as immune to want and desire. I am not a mountain or a cave, a force of nature or a power on the earth, but I have her talent for not seeing what I cannot stand to face. I make sure that I do not want what I do not think I can have, and I keep clearly in mind what it is I cannot have. I roll in the night all the stories I never told her, cannot tell her still—her voice in my brain echoing love and despair and grief and rage. When, in the night, she hears me call her name, it is not really me she hears, it is the me I constructed for her—the one who does not need her too much, the one whose heart is not too tender, whose insides are iron and silver, whose dreams are cold ice and slate—who needs nothing, nothing. I keep in mind the image of a closed door, Mama weeping on the other side. She could not rescue me. I cannot rescue her. Sometimes I cannot even reach across the wall that separates us. On my stepfather’s birthday I make coffee and bake bread pudding with bourbon sauce. I invite friends over, tell outrageous stories, and use horrible words. I scratch my scars and hug my lover, thinking about Mama twelve states away. My accent comes back and my weight settles down lower, until the ache in my spine is steady and hot. I remember Mama sitting at the kitchen table in the early morning, tears in her eyes, lying to me and my sister, promising us that the time would come when she would leave him—that as soon as we were older, as soon as there was a little more money put by and things were a little easier—she would go. I think about her sitting there now, waiting for him to wake up and want his coffee, for the day to start moving around her, things to get so busy she won’t have to think. Sometimes, I hate my mama. Sometimes, I hate myself. I see myself in her, and her in me. I see us too clearly sometimes, all the little betrayals that cannot be forgotten or changed. When Mama calls, I wait a little before speaking. “Mama,” I say, “I knew you would call.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  There was nobody at hand to revive her with cold water or other remedies, and hence it was some time before she came to her senses. When, eventually, the strength returned to her poor exhausted body, bringing with it further tears and lamentations, she called out over and over again to her children and searched high and low for them in every cavern she could find. But when she saw that her efforts were useless and that the night was approaching, she began, prompted by an instinctive feeling that all was not entirely lost, to devote some attention to her own predicament. And, leaving the shore, she returned to the cave where she was in the habit of giving vent to her tears and sorrow. She had had nothing to eat since midday, and a little after tierce on the following morning, having spent the night in great fear and incredible anguish, she was compelled to start eating grass in order to appease her hunger. Having fed herself to the best of her ability, she then started brooding, tearfully, about what was to become of her. And whilst in the midst of these various reflections, she caught sight of a doe, which came towards her and disappeared into a nearby cave, emerging shortly afterwards and then running away into the woods. Getting up from where she was sitting, she entered the cave from which the doe had emerged, and inside she saw two newly born roebucks, no more than a few hours old, which seemed to her the sweetest and most charming sight it was possible to imagine. And since her own milk was not yet dry after her recent confinement, she picked them up tenderly and applied them to her breast. They showed no sign of refusing this favour, but took suck from her as though she were their own mother; and from then on they made no distinction between their mother and herself. Thus the lady felt she had found some company on this deserted island, and having become just as familiar with the doe as with the two roebucks, she resolved to remain there for the rest of her days on a diet of grass and water, bursting into tears whenever she remembered her past life with her husband and children. As a result of leading this sort of life, the gentle woman had turned quite wild when, a few months later, a small Pisan ship happened to be driven in by a storm, casting anchor in the same little bay where she herself had arrived, and lying there for several days.