It happened when night fell…

It was on that night
when the reality of life,
that heroine of non-divine
comedy,
whose acting we watched
with a varying degree
of interest,
unveiled her face…

 

Frightened, I shut
the door of the poor
room of my imagination.
I could not forget
the image
with its gaping void,
like the abysmal pit of the grave.
No trace of life.
Now really
NOTHING AHEAD.

 

It was not that
splendid La Belle Dame –
Death.

 

What I saw
was a rite
of her official
priests.

 

Today I can recall
a similar scene,
which occurred a few years later:
“From a nylon bag
he took out a dark
earthy-black object.
The earth filled the cavities of
the skull
and there was also some mouldered rag
of a dress.
That was my Mother.
The head. That magnificent
product of nature
and humanism –
a rust-eaten,
mould-caked clod…

I shut myself
in the Poor
Room of my Imagination.
I repeated in despair
NOTHING AHEAD…

I knew
I had to destroy
the gaping hole…
I began to cover it up,
wrap it up, gag it,
board it up…
In desperation,
in fury
and,…
with great love
for man’s
image.

 

Tadeusz Kantor, “Intimate Comments”, 1986-88, typescript in the Cricoteka Archives, p. 37-38.

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