GROPING ABOUT IN AUTUMN, AS EVER
It was as if I had come out from an underground tunnel
while autumn flowers left cord for me
I don’t know why, but when it is autumn I remember you
and my uncertain steps seem, suddenly, to have a meaning
far far away a song is heard
that I once used to whisper:
“autumn, autumn, why do you change
so deeply
your slave’ s paths …”
look, peaceful now, I become confident
and I raise hesitation to the rank
of ruling principle of the world
you are near,
you hold my hand,
even if you are so silent,
even if you don’t exist …
why ever do you change so deeply
your slave’s paths?
Illustration from "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" -- Henry Darger
Henry Darger was born in 1892 and raised in an asylum for feeble minded children, where he was subjected to harsh punishments and forced labor. He escaped a year before the asylum was investigated for abuse found work as a janitor, and lived a quiet solitary life in Chicago. On the day after his 81st birthday, he died in the St. Augustine Mission, and his landlord, photographer Nathan Lerner opened his apartment, becoming the first person to discover his 15,000-page novel "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion," his 10,000-page novel "Crazy House," a 5,000-page autobiography and assorted diaries, a 10-year daily weather journal, and hundreds of illustrations and water colors. Lerner and his wife Kiyoko gained the rights to Darger’s estate and promoted his works, leading the American Folk Art Museum to call him “one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.” His body rests in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois, in a plot called “The Old People of the Little Sisters of the Poor Plot” under a headstone inscribed “Artist” and “Protector of Children.”
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