KATHERINE MANSFIELD

It is so strange to bring the dead to life again. There’s my grandmother, back in her chair with her pink knitting, there stalks my uncle over the grass. I feel as I write “you are not dead, my darlings. All is remembered. I bow down to you. I efface myself so that you may live again through me in your richness and beauty.” And one feels possessed. And then the peace where it all happens. I have tried to make it as familiar to ‘you’ as it is to me. You know the marigolds? You know those pools in the rocks? You know the mousetrap on the wash house window sill? And, too, one tries to go deep - to speak to the secret self we all have - to acknowledge that.