Words spoken in other times

 I can feel grief. I can’t understand it.

One of the rules of grief and grieving is that nothing anyone else says can possibly help. I’ve found that to be true — except maybe for this, which helped a little:

 

Words that they said to me at other times, I hear now.

 

That’s Antonio Porchia in Voices, a collection of aphorisms. Porchia was a working guy of Italian descent who lived in Argentina. He said the aphorisms just came to him, like voices speaking. Sometimes he heard the voices of loved ones long gone.

Like Porchia, I often hear words that were spoken to me in other times. Those words are consoling.

• Antonio Porchia, Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin; Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 2003, 97. For a short note on Porchia as a writer, see “What is the minimum it takes to be a writer?” Sept. 11, 2021.