The waters were rising yet.
And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realized that, at forty, one must learn the rigors of accptance. Capitalize it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me – be it a watery grave in Ireland's only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its grayer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.
Electrified, I searched for a notebook.
from "Fjord of Killary," by Kevin Barry
The New Yorker, February 1, 2010. Complete story here.
