Record Of Your Life Poem by gershon hepner

Record Of Your Life



What would happen if a stranger found
in the boxes underneath your bed
the records of your life, without the sound
of your own voice? No words you've ever said
will come to life again. They'll be distorted,
transformed into an obsolete archive,
because when you from Hades are transported,
the records will disprove that you're alive,
and some of them will seem to be disgusting,
while others will suggest that you were mad,
and though you may have written them while lusting
for fame, you'll only make the readers sad.

Inspired by an article in the June 26,2009 NYT by Eve M. Kahn, describing an archive of Frieda Kahlo's work bought by a lawyer from a woodcarver from whom Frida acquired frames in exchange for pictures and trinkets. Shortly before her death she handed him papers marked 'personal Archive for my private life.' Barbara Levine, a photography curator in San Miguel de Allende who has written a book about the collection, which includes some of Frida's recipes, which Diego Rivera would make 'simply disgusting' when he ate, asks:

What would happen if a stranger opened the boxes we all keep under the bed, or in shoe boxes in the closet? '

6/26/09

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