The poem
In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I
this poem goes so to the heart of my sense of having lived in the 20th century. it is a friend from the 60s who led me to it, a friend with whom I share efforts to live an authentic personal life, with whom i have suffered the separation from "we", and with whom I continue to respond to the "dark birds of history" who demand our love for each other.