t⇒∞
Yesterday your voice came over the unwired space between us
and met (after bouncing from rectangles in towers
as fast as tiny light between leaves) my simple ears
and there sitting before the Hirshhorn’s panorama
of gray buildings and the graying sky and white steam rising:
the arc of your attention met me: an uncertain voice at first
becoming more familiar: it is a voice
I’m learning: a voice being carried as I am gone
and not carried as I am gone
My memory of you thus generates as something that is and is not
How much more are you with me
as we are apart: as traveling far is returning:
as one distance closes other same distances appear as endless fractals
frozen but evolving
I hear so easily but briefly the music of your hair which is the smooth song
of dark water: the rivulets given and received by the aplomb composing wind: it is
the loyal night absorbing the heat of a day:
a note held and released
becoming diffuse and inaudible
Filed under: Composition, poetry, writing | 6 Comments
Search
-
You are currently browsing the Commonwealth weblog archives.
Three Odd Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
Wislawa Szymborska
Thanks. I love Szymborska, and I have never read that poem before — it’s great. Oddly enough last night I was writing and trying to describe that very reality: that when something is observed, the observation of an experience is not the experience itself (of course the observing in and of itself exists as an experience, but that’s something once removed). The words that describe the moon are always trailing behind, describing the moon that has already changed. Thus one rendering of the adage: do not confuse the moon with the finger pointing at the moon.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as well as Wittgenstein (and numerous others) suggest that our reality is shaped by our language.
The problem with seeking to understand and create yourself or the world (debateably different things) through poems/writing/etc is that you are in grave danger of believing your truth to be a clever phrase or two pennned on paper.
Perhaps that is what these observations point to, Im not sure.
I really, truly believe that the past doesnt steal the first syllable of the ‘future’ and that silence does continue even in spite of your yelling the word. There is grace outside of the possibilities of algebra and grammar.
Some people would point to a meditative experience, or the space outside of thought as proof of a free, unbounded land.
But what about simply being irrational, and illogical and emotional and true to nothing?
All of this thinking and ‘figuring it out’ bores me. \
Clever tricks.
I agree, and know that I sometimes wax algebraic and wax analytical in my writing — but generally that is a function of habit (and I’m trying to break it, but it’s so darn amusing and comforting sometimes). There is a poem by e.e. cummings (i’ll find it and post it) called “I have been sometimes true to nothing…” I was reading over a lot of my old writing recently, and realized that the vast majority of it is crap because it is all trying to be poetic or trying to be clever; and is a long string of comments made without committing to being attentive and open to irrationality and chaos and paradox. I think you’ll like the next post, Ben
But what about simply being irrational, and illogical and emotional and true to nothing?
I did that for three in Graduate school. Nihilism gets boring quite quickly.
pornstar wrestler dragom lili wrestler