Summary

A Foreshortened Journey – first person, past tense / three stanzas (paragraphs), prose poem. The male speaker stops for a rest in the middle of climbing up a flight of stairs, and occupies himself first by looking out a window, and then sits down. A grandmother and her young granddaughter try to come down, and find themselves blocked. The grandmother explains that the man on the stairs is too tired to go on and too tired to go back, and then she and her granddaughter move past. As she goes by, the granddaughter recites what the speaker recognizes as the Hebrew prayer for the dead. She says, as she does so, that she hopes it will “soothe you in your terrors” and adding the hope that “When you hear this again, she said, perhaps the words will be less intimidating, if you remember how you first...