With winter settling on the place, the sedge
is dry, the woods stand bare. No enemy
to you, I watch the shadow of one hill
rise on the opposite, the valley sheds
its golden skin, grows dull before it drops
in darkness. Sounds sharpen—shards of dry leaves,
wings’ flap, the shake of an abandoned branch.
Outcroppings lose their yellow to the gray,
the swallows drilling holes in the blue air.
More smaller life beats in each metric cube
than in all of my body there is life.
The wind is noise, the wind is movement. Live
branches mingle with the dead. I’m barely
bigger than the ants, slower than spiders.
I don’t move the way these insects scurry.
The beetle has no map of the terrain.
They can’t see all of me at once. Each knows
nothing of what the other thinks. Maybe
they know what water cut these rocks to shape
of heavy brow above blind eyes. I’m not
a stone, nor a bug—that knowledge only
separates me from cicadas sleeping
under my feet. Flies will far outlive me.
The laundry stiffens. Stars, like sheets of white,
sing fearlessly of their own howling.
This perverse season has no fantasy.
Your absence deeper than the gorge, empty
geological truths that come between things.
"The poet is of no party." BaudelaireOur manifesto is an act of substantiation.
We reject all forms of futilitarianism, in whatever disguise.
We believe that comedy is the song of the village and tragedy the song of the goat.
We believe what is written in the books, but now we want to see for ourselves.
The single idea, beating on the same doors in vain.
The analogue and the invention.
The death cell.
The first permission.
Though we watch the stage for things to happen, though our minds wander.
By ourselves in the green field, playing our diversion.
Though the story begins with the loss of a home.
Out of the machine, we shift restlessly in our seats.