Daily Poem: The Great Fear ~ Piera Oppezzo
The Great Fear
~ Piera Oppezzo
The history of my self
is the history of a great fear
of being myself,
set against the fear of losing myself,
set against the fear of fear.
It could not be otherwise:
in apprehension memory is lost,
its submission is everything.
Nor could
my childhood,
ransacked by family,
permit me a stable, definite maturity.
Nor could my isolated life
permit me a less fragile thing
than this floundering among anxieties and uncertainties.
My childhood I survived,
my adulthood I survived.
Almost nothing compared with life.
I survived, nevertheless.
And now, among the ruins of my being,
something, a firm utopia, is about to flower.