silence is a message from the shadow

silence is a message from the shadow
that clears no threshold and feeds
on light and the absence of light

silence is a sign when speech
goes awry or stalls mid-word

silence is a garden of the sky
that petitions heaven in mute prayer
shaped like landscape

silence is a question
laid on the question

silence is a house where the poem lives
where it takes a body
even while damning itself to silence

silence is a music whose notes
are the planets and their stars

silence is a season when the fruit of a poem
ripens mutely

silence is a vibration of the immobile
a song to be born in the throat
of vowel-shaped birds

silence is a straying from the road
discretely pointing out the road
in the middle of the road

silence is a hand that opens the poem
the trembled voice of the soul where rises
what we are and are not

silence is the dream of being that dreams
its birth from before its birth
and smothers its first cry

silence is the mirror that washes speech
in the most naked water of speech

silence is an unfinished miracle
where the world takes shape in one blow


amina said

(my translation)

rail fence, manitoulin island

to ask oneself whether one can photograph the void
this is not even an event or let's say a fact what is the momentary coexistence
of the photographer and the void

alix cleo roubaud

XXX (bodies in gary, indiana)

Breasts

What fortune to carry two small breasts

toward someone, toward the unknown.

Two small breasts that say: tomorrow perhaps...

and, with that alone,

are happy. Between them rests

the locket with the mother’s picture,

as if her protection

separates them, so the girl won’t dare

touch both at once,

these two youthful breasts

a bit more alive than she‘s aware,

that she will bear to someone yet unknown,

Will they make her happy,

two innocent little breasts that resist

life’s winds?… These stubborn little breasts,

seeming veiled in mourning cloth—-

against which each poses,

under imperceptible alerts,

the tender demands

of covered roses.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(my translation)

without words

the ice storm and everything since

(january, 2010)