All over the body. Welts, hives, sores, scrapes, bruises, boils. All forms of pain, hanging on the skin. Nothing inside, all external. All blighted. All worn. Worn like a coat, like a blouse. Like a badge. Like so many red and purple badges. Signifiers, symbols. To where you might walk into a house, a house you’d never been to, and the strangers there would stare at you as though you were an authority figure who might soon speak, and in speaking, correct their lives. Or they might, by your example, learn how not to live. They might stone you for your troubles. This would cause new welts, new scrapes. Or perhaps at some point suffering would end. Just end, but not in death. In its own white blinding. A bodily white noise. You might rejoice. My troubles ended, Lord, I will wear red robes, will wear a purple sash. You might walk to another house, another house you’d never been to, and the strangers there would bow and kiss your feet. O Lord, they might say, thank you for Him whom You have sent in these robes, O Lord, let Him cleanse us of the pains hanging on our skins.

Further proof that I am loved to an undeserved degree: the Collected Poems 1956-1998 of Zbigniew Herbert arrived in the mail today. I am so happy I could die.

Is this hyperbole?