Alumna Poem
May 21, 2005

Back on campus for her twenty-fifth reunion, Marjory Heath Wentworth '80, the poet laureate of South Carolina, read a poem she had written for the class of 2005 at Baccalaureate Saturday, May 21, the night before commencement.

The Sound of Your Own Voice Singing

By Marjory Heath Wentworth '80

You came to this valley with expectations
you could not name but felt deeply, stumbling
out of the shadows of the twentieth century,
mumbling words that were distant but held you close
to the tortured world: Hiroshima, Auschwitz, My Lai.
Days felt like dreams. You remember
a house where music played through the night
and windows opened to the world. Rooms filled
with people you didn’t know but recognized.
It was a place you felt safe. A house with no shadows.
How quickly death descended and shattered
that bright September Tuesday morning.
Down, down, down dropped the bodies
into the darkness and the sorrow
into the city smothered in paper and ash.
You came stumbling out of the smoke
into a room filling with sunlight and strangers.
You loved each one fiercely, as though they were your own,
and tenderness became the only way
to survive your time on earth.
The weight of love is the heaviest burden
you have learned to carry.
In the silence of the heavens,
it’s a dream that wakes you
with the sound of your own voice singing.