from "A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote

As Thanksgiving and the season of Advent approach, here’s an excerpt from Truman Capote’s classic 1956 short story, “A Christmas Memory,” laid out as a poem for your reading pleasure:

“My, how foolish I am!” my friend cries,
suddenly alert,
like a woman remembering too late
she has biscuits in the oven.
“You know what I’ve always thought?”
she asks in a tone of discovery,
and not smiling at me but a point beyond.

“I’ve always thought a body
would have to be sick and dying
before they saw the Lord. And I imagined
that when He came it would be
like looking at the Baptist window:
pretty as colored glass
with the sun pouring through,
such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark.
And it’s been a comfort: to think of that shine
taking away all the spooky feeling.

But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager
at the very end a body realizes
the Lord has already shown Himself.
That things as they are” — her hand circles
in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass
and Queenie pawing earth over her bone —
“just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him.

As for me, I could leave the world
with today in my eyes.”

+ Truman Capote