The Horse Show

Constantly near you,

I never in my entiresixty-four years knew you so well as yesterdayor half so well.

We talked. you were never so lucid, so disengaged from all exigenciesof place and time.

We talked of ourselves,intimately, a thing never heard between us.

How long have we waited? almost a hundred years.

You said,

Unless there is some spark, somespirit we keep within ourselves, a life, acontinuing life's impossible-and it is allwe have.

There is no other life, only the one.

The world of the spirits that come afterwardis the same as our own, just like you sittingthere they come and talk to me, just the same.

They come to bother us.

Why?

I said.

I don'tknow.

Perhaps to find out what we are doing.

Jealous, do you think?

I don't know.

Idon't know why they should want to come back.

I was reading about some men who had beenburied under a mountain,

I said to her, andone of them came back after two months,digging himself out.

It was in Switzerland,you remember?

Of course I remember.

Thevillagers tho't it was a ghost coming downto complain.

They were frightened.

Theydo come, she said, what you callmy "visions." I talk to them just as Iam talking to you.

I see them plainly.

Oh if I could only read!

You don't knowwhat adjustments I have made.

AllI can do is to try to live over againwhat I knew when your brother and youwere children-but I can't always succeed.

Tell me about the horse show.

I havebeen waiting all week to hear about it.

Mother darling,

I wasn't able to get away.

Oh that's too bad.

It was just a show;they make the horses walk up and downto judge them by their form.

Oh is thatall?

I tho't it was something else.

Ohthey jump and run too.

I wish you had been there,

I was so interested to hear about it.