Monday, May 28, 2012

one stone on another stone






the stones are stones
tangles of energy that unravel slowly

i unravel faster


what did we expect the world to be?

i lick the evening light from their faces


17 comments:

  1. oh, i love it! i love it AND i love your photograph!


    this from yves bonnefoy this morning:


    On the moss-stained
    Rock the shadows
    Move. Almost like nymphs
    In their dance.

    When a sliver of sun
    Shines through, their hair
    Glints as gold might do
    In a somber crucible.

    Life will end.
    Life endures.
    The same as a child, playing
    With too many dreams.

    ***

    on this day that begins with one, two, three iris opening, and then six; on this day that begins with yves bonnefoy and then my own personal history...that of my mother...what did we expect the world to be?

    i wrote this this morning before i learned of my mother. i post it to show what dialogue we are in, all of us, you and i, us and the stones, the world and each of us, all of us resonating stories between one another:

    life begins the work of preparing us for death immediately
    after all, we are born bloody, not in neat placid packages
    plants, birds, the family pets, candles on birthday cakes

    how quickly can we learn?
    how deeply can we sink our heals in resistance?

    a day begins
    a day ends

    if only we ripped this into our lungs
    and breathed as we were intended to

    for now
    for now

    ***

    synchronicity goes much deeper than photographs. it goes through the bone and through the word bone and through the idea and through the dust that the bones will one day become, out and into light.

    xo
    erin

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    1. erin: there is more here than i could hope to answer, except with assent that comes from very deep inside me, yes, and then, yes

      perhaps we notice this synchronicity so often because all time is really time present (eliot), and sometimes we are granted a sliver of a glimpse into the truth of that ... there is only now, even the past is real only in the way it persists into the present ... it is now, and then, it is now ...

      if only we ripped this into our lungs
      and breathed as we were intended to

      for now
      for now


      i imagine what a world it might be if your poem were printed above the threshold of birthing rooms and chiseled into cemetery gates ... exactly as it should be ...

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  2. That's a good question... ;-)

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    1. Lucia: is there any other question? any question that isn't this question in translation??

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  3. and i came here with this another poem, and then i read erin: "how quickly can we learn?" - and about synchronicity in the endless light texture of the world - and i marvel, and i have no words but an endless smile

    An education by stone: through lessons,
    to learn from the stone: to go to it often,
    to catch its level, impersonal voice
    (by its choice of words it begins its classes).
    The lesson in morals, the stone's cold reistance
    to flow, to flowing, to being hammered:
    the lesson in poetics, its concrete flesh:
    in economics, how to grow dense compactly;
    lessons from the stone, (from without to within,
    dumb primer), for the routine speller of spells.

    Another education by stone: in the backlands
    (from within to without and pre-didactic place).
    In the backlands stone does not know how to lecture,
    and, even if it did would teach nothing:
    you don't learn the stone, there: there, the stone,
    born stone, penetrates the soul.


    João Cabral de Melo Neto

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    1. Roxana: these coincidences -- which i can only believe are so much more than coincidence -- astonish me :-)

      stone penetrates the soul ... yes, it does ... the slow voice of stone is underneath all speech ...

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  4. As i was small i collect stones from each place where i gone... I collect stones naw too, we are always the same... Your fotos are so beautifull

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    1. Laura the stones stay with us, no matter what. and, yes, we are always the same -- we pretend otherwise, but secretly our pockets are filled with the many colored pebbles we picked up when we were five, and we were are alone, we take them out and lose ourselves in their shine ...

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  5. Nearly not daring to speak, as they seem to dream of their garden each.

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    1. Robert they balance carefully ... even the breath of a word might topple them ...

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  6. what a gorgeous picture and zen-style poem, I love to read the responses and evocations too. for me it brought to mind the Paradox of the Stone, but of course the stone is greater than logic :)

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    1. Marion: the responses go where i would never have imagined. that is the reward, isn't it? :-)

      stones are stones before logic and will be stones long after it has been forgotten ...

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  7. Pebble stone memories

    ******

    They hold so much or nothing at all

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    1. Liz: lately i begin to wonder about the truth of this "or"

      all -- truly all, repletion, perfect fullness -- is harder and harder to distinguish from nothing -- they seem to be two ends of a circle (if circles have ends :-) that meet ... where??

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  8. how fascinating that we should both gather inspiration from the idea of a cairn this week. i like how a cairn in german is anthropomorphic: steinmann, man of stone. furthermore i feel stone to be a word so immense in it's beauty that every poem, song, book or conversation should include it. this is my poetics.

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  9. Andreas: this is a true poetics, almost a religion ...

    steinmann ... you see these along the highways in northern ontario -- another true poetics, i think ...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk

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    1. that's interesting, James.

      the swedish word for cairn is stenröse. sten meaning stone or rock. röse is an old word that essentially means pile. so, a pile of rocks. it's desriptive but not very poetic.

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