Anne Michaels

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

Every silence is the story of a love, of loss, of what can't be rescued - the story of a face turned away, of a heart hardened by its hardness.

We name the world to know it. But words can die before we can say them. Ideas can fade before we can think them.

History is a dream we try to remember, a story in the night. The powerful sometimes write it down, the poor try to remember their own best dreams.

We fall backward into the well of our lives like Jacobo, the butler from the own house of our tragedy, fallen from the heights of the vault, we go down not as men go down in space, plummeting from the pinnacle of will, falling from another citadel.