A really lovely little essay in the NYT magazine this weekend entitled Family Meal. Allen Shawn is son of the New Yorker editor and brother of that odd hummunculus of a man Wallace Shawn. Allen Shawn apparently has a twin sister Mary who was mentally retarded and institutionalized.
It's a story of the sister Mary's annual visit home with the family for her birthday when their mother is 99 and completely infirm. The piece ends with the lines: 'How could I not cry when Piergiorgio recited these lines in Italian from a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo:
Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed รจ subito sera.
Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth
transfixed by a sun ray:
and suddenly it is evening. '
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