In That Dark Place Poem by gershon hepner

In that dark place where I dwell
there are wounds that never heal;
please don’t tell me that you feel
my pain, for no one goes to hell
and back accompanied by friends,
or even lovers. Such a trip
cannot be done in partnership,
and there’s no way to make amends
where wounds don’t heal, nor any beacon
in darkness where, unseen, they fester.
Though King Lear’s best friend was his jester,
he thought reality was Regan
and Goneril, since he was mad.
However hard Cordelia tried,
alone in darkness he defied
inducements not to feel so sad.

Michiko Kakutani reviews “In America, ” by Susan Sontag (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) in “Love as a Distraction That Gets in the Way of Art, The New York Times, February 29,2000. “H was in a dark place where there were only wounds, ” writes Ms. Sontag of one character. Michiko Kakutani does not like the novel in which ostensibly Ms. Sontag says what she has said elsewhere with more nuance and subtlety.


2/29/00