So "In June, the Labyrinth."
I'm just going to read the poem.
So I'll give you a little context to open.
I went through a period of two years, in which I
lost quite a few friends.
And the year-- the two year time was capped off
by burying my mother.
And so it was intense, and that became a mythopoetic poem
with a composite figure at the center, whom I called Elle.
E-L-L-E, Elle.
And there's two strands to the narrative.
One is Elle's quest for wisdom and love,
and the other is the narrator's quest
for healing, understanding, which
is symbolized by walking the labyrinth, an old symbol
of the journey of life.
I call it this because it so happened--
it happens that every summer we go to France.
And in these years in which I was losing friends, and then
family members, I had the odd experience
of going to Chartres Cathedral, where there
is a labyrinth-- one of the very few
that survived the French Revolution.
And I discovered that there is also a Black Madonna there.
And I didn't know that.
I'm not Catholic, and yet I found myself
lighting candles, and walking the labyrinth,
and praying for my friends.
And three times this happened.
I would get back, and there would be news
that my friend had died.
Once, even while I was walking the labyrinth.
So it just became a journey.
So this very personal book, I distanced a bit
by making it this story, this kind of mythic story.
Two epigraphs-- "The narrative is genealogical,
but it does not simply amount to an act of memory.
It witnesses in the manner of an ethical or political act
for today and for tomorrow."
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death.
And a slightly revised Borges--
"The purpose which guided her was not impossible,
though it was supernatural."
From Labyrinths.
"One.
F's gift from his rose garden and the rosette
in the labyrinth center like a promise.
A promise.
The real rose closed tight, stuck, as an afterthought,
in a glass of water, which, overnight, opened,
as if the window sash were up--
everything perfumed.
A journey.
Ellle, ill, prayed for a miracle I
did not know, but dreamed she'd go,
and forth went without obstacle.
To journey to the labyrinth, hours
through hilly countryside, and village like nothing
I remembered.
Spires rising in a golden wheat field.
Possibly a photograph or film, my mind not recalling
the source.
The image gaining heft in thought,
but from the car, train tracks, tree alleys, all signs
overhead--
in the town, we couldn't find the cathedral
with the labyrinth.
The houses were low, of ancient wood,
slightly aslant and crooked, weathered overhangs
for old times slops.
A few cobbled streets.
We were hungry and ate.
Your lips smacked between bites and I dabbed my mouth.
Then it was there.