Vespers - Louise Glück (from Wild Iris)
You thought we didn't know. But we knew once, children know these things. Don't turn away now— we inhabited a lie to appease you. I remember sunlight of early spring, embankments netted with dark vinca. I remember lying in a field, touching my brother's body. Don't turn away now; we denied memory to console you. We mimicked you, reciting the terms of our punishment. I remember some of it, not all of it: deceit begins as forgetting. I remember small things, flowers growing under the hawthorn tree, bells of the wild scilla. Not all, but enough to know you exist: who else had reason to create mistrust between a brother and sister but the one who profited, to whom we turned in solitude? Who else would so envy the bond we had then as to tell us it was not earth but heaven we were losing? [From: Glück, L. (1992) The Wild Iris . Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, p44]