Jorie Graham, 19 July 2007
“... After great rain. Gradually you are revealing yourself to me. The lesson carves a tunnel through an occupied territory. Great beaches come into existence, are laved for centuries, small play where the castles are built, the water carried up for moats, the buckets lost at the end of the exciting day, then even the dunes go under, it takes a long while but then they are gone altogether, ocean takes the place, as today where the overpass revealed the fields gone under &, just at the surface of the water, the long miles of barbed wire, twice-there, the ones below (of water) trembling, the fence-posts’ small fixed pupils staring up every fifty feet at the sky, glittering, their replicas shivering, the spines of grasses gnawed-at by the sick human eye, when will we open them again our eyes, this must all be from the world of shut eyes, one’s temples feel the cold, maybe one is inside a sea shell, one is what another force is hearing – how lovely, we are being handed over to an other force, listen, put this to your ear – the last river we know loses its form, widens, as if a foot were lifted from the dancefloor but not put down again, ever, so that it’s not a dance-step, no, more like an amputation where the step just disappears, midair, although also the rest of the body is missing, beware of your past, there is a fiery apple in the orchard, the coal in the under- ground is bursting with sunlight, inquire no further it says, it wishes it were a root, a bulb, a closed fist – look how it fills with meaning when opened – then when extended – let us not go there – broken, broken – no to the imagination of some great murmuring through the soil as through the souls of all men – silent agreement which is actually the true soil – but there it is now going under – nothing will grow in it – the footsteps are washed away which might have attempted kindness or cultivation or a walk over the earth to undertake curiosity – that was our true gift to creation: curiosity – how we would dream eyes closed in fog all through the storm, then open up to aftermath, run out to see – & then of course too much, too much – too much wanting to know – sorry I did not mean to raise my voice – I will turn no further – you are making yourself punishable says the flood – I will drink it, I will, my God gave it me says the evaporation sluicing the invisible surfaces, in which clouds are being said, right into the shuddering of time, its so called passing – each land had its time for being born, each date a cage shrinking – until the creature has ribs that bend-in and a skull that is forced into its heart, & the rain is falling chattering pearling completely turning-in, turning, lost, & all the words that might have held it, it now flows through, & the rim of the meaning crumbles – & it is the new world you wanted – & it is beginning its life now ...”