this city

today i wear myself in my eyes
offering it to those who pass by
the grey and glow of light re cycled
through

(they are all i can give this city
this city they say has it all)

i am here at the shore of the river
and you are here, the sky told me,
so many beautiful shades of grey

enveloping the city
softening the edges
calling calm

it’s magic, i swear by it

the day is still
bending forward
the morning stretched like arms
reaching to some other side
what will they gather?

today i say i love this city
the way the birds stay
hovering above the vanquished lands
the startle of silver trees still
crackling upwards
the fragile held in the rough

all little birds’ eggs on the cliffs edge

we

hanging over soft rounded pegs of olden piers
the splintered wood of broken planks

what once was
is what is once
now and again

-

holding
a viscous suspension
a jar of salt water
made of tears, dipped from the calms

some of bar harbor
some the dead sea
the pacific of corinto
some drops from rossport

here belief dissolves

i am left and here are we
we another rounding

i hold the glass
and our we we the warming

two breaths bring
moisture smudging
to draw a circle around the glass

to tap the lid,
a stirring

-

and i believe
i do not believe ; i believe only when it is we

-

when my exterior fails my interior?

-

that ghostly manifestation
haunting beneath every word and phrasing
every inclination
make it manifest
what cannot be so easily stated
what is so fragile that we cannot utter it
make it something so

all the while being :

‘Pascal’s limited being who recognizes intuitively his connection to energies exceeding him on all sides.’

‘For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.’ -Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72

-

Movement

Forge the contrary of this world
Where the soul grows mute
Where time dries us up

Man perishes from his own venom
But rises in the light he traces

Give birth to yourself
Traverse yourself

Release the movement

Kindle this word
which faces man

And reaches toward him

Andrée Chedid

-

Resonance

Deep in the inner coves
Where the undertow erodes our flesh
We forget
cowering in our grief
That far off and all around
Immensity vibrates

How do we enter
How rise from the ruins
How redeem the soul from its ashes

How restore beauty to beauty

How sustain
even with breaking heart
The vast precarious play
Of this vigilant
Life

Andrée Chedid

~ by wehavetobehavetobeerrant on February 7, 2008.