In Memoriam Seamus Heaney


     That first cry.  You don't even know that it's yours yet, don't know the idea
of you yet, or what a cry is.
     But you make it.  The noise.  An assertion of self, perhaps, just as self starts.
     Self starts before consciousness--and consciousness, when it comes, quickly
becomes self-conscious.
     That first noise is not conscious.  And it recurs, not as a willed noise, not yet
identifiable as noise by you, and still inseparable from you.
     When self becomes conscious, it starts the collecting and accumulating that
become life.  When self-consciousness happens, the collecting and accumulation
will start to have a form, and begin to be what grown-ups call knowledge.
Understanding.  Wisdom.
     And then it's gone.  Where?  Where to?
     And the last thing we know before knowing itself stops is the silence.
     "Don't be afraid."