Saturday, January 22, 2011

I know it all

“I know it all, second renter,
I know it all,
Down to the very cold you feel.”

Mrs. R, my poetry teacher who introduced me to Tagore and Kazantzakis and de-coded the opaque world of T.S. Eliot for us, once sent me this haiku in response to one of the angst-ridden letters of my youth.

The knowledge that someone understood, that someone has walked this path before, that someone will not ridicule your pain, that someone will listen to your story without irritation or indifference - how infinitely precious.

In the rented house of each stage of life, is it this "I know" that you search for, and find so rarely?

1 comment:

  1. Beautifully written-I am not sure why, but it reminded me of this poem by a dear friend.

    sometimes, love is folded
    as tenderly as the clothes
    of the dead
    are folded one last time
    before being given away
    - Shabbir Banoobhai, A mountain is an upside down valley, www.veilsoflight.com

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