Your Legacy Must Be Both Love and Fear

Music: Fugue in F Minor. By Dimitri Shostakovich.  Sequenced by J. Marques.

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Your legacy must be both love and fear. I know that when you died, you feared for me. The family curse you carried in your breast Was not a gift you wanted to pass on. But fear of it, just like my love for you, Must linger in my heart, unwelcome guest! And as I weep for your too early death, I also can hear rumblings of my own. Ah, Mother! We are linked like paper dolls, A line of little cutouts in a row. I see my clearest memories in my mirror And feel your anguish bloom beneath my breast. For this, my love for you is more, not less. In our misfortune there's a common grace: For me, in that you must have grieved my burden; For you, in that you must have mine foreseen.