Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

by Svetlana Gagarin

 

The words decay, the words decay and fall
Like divers gawking at the curvatures
Of intrapsychic layers: wingéd crutch,
Which in the end exhausts, for are words not
Tautologies? A Nietzchean affluence
Shrugs off verbal personae, mots de noir –
Asseverations ill as which may botch
Sole singulars into a parable
Whose maps revive hysteria’s astrolabe;
As now slips shattered into what will be.

Europamüde, baby, then. Farewell.
When you returned from Paris it was cold.