Book of My Mother

XXX

BUT NOTHING WILL bring back my mother, nothing will bring back the one who answered to the name of Maman, who always answered and came running so quickly at the sweet name of Maman. My mother is dead, dead, dead. My dead mother is dead, dead. Thus goes the beating scansion of my grief, thus monotonously beats the puffing train of my grief, thus beat and jolt the axles of the train of my grief, the interminable train of my grief that runs every night and every day, while I smile at those from outside with just one idea in my head and a death in my heart. Thus beat the axles of the long train, ever beating, that train, my grief, that funeral train ever bearing away my dead mother with her hair disheveled at the carriage door, and I trail after the moving train, panting as I trail, all pale and sweating and obsequious, in the wake of the moving train which is bearing away my dead mother and her blessings.