What Kind of a Person
What Kind of a Person - meaning Summary
Identity Through Humble Embodiment
The speaker answers a direct question about identity by describing a mixed, humble self: modern in feeling and memory but ancient in body and faith. He rejects heroic or precise metaphors, preferring a clumsy pestle that blends good and bad. Grounded and wary of extremes, he moves through life steadily, accepting limitation and mortality while claiming simple freedom in ordinary acts. The tone is self-aware, modest, and quietly celebratory.
Read Complete Analyses"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me. I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul, Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century, But with an old body from ancient times And with a God even older than my body. I'm a person for the surface of the earth. Low places, caves and wells Frighten me. Mountain peaks And tall buildings scare me. I'm not like an inserted fork, Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon. I'm not flat and sly Like a spatula creeping up from below. At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle Mashing good and bad together For a little taste And a little fragrance. Arrows do not direct me. I conduct My business carefully and quietly Like a long will that began to be written The moment I was born. s Now I stand at the side of the street Weary, leaning on a parking meter. I can stand here for nothing, free. I'm not a car, I'm a person, A man-god, a god-man Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.
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