The point is not the word, but where it is spoken.
When I say a word on the mountaintop that I have said in the valley, it is not the same word.
Tune your ears to the deep ensilencedment of these very words which now surround my stony silence and be silent back, in turn, to me.
Like the bright-lit skies above us here.
Like the waters which bear shattered silences over greening earths.
Like the June roses which bloody their young bodies upon cruel, thorny parents.
Like the lifting leap of a squirrel which hops me by.
Like the modest nodding-yes of a willow’s slender branch which affirms this world is well.
Like the schizoid waterfalls which run from their own beauty.
It is not the word that speaks, but the air around it, which holds the word as if in a capsule, but the heavens around the air, but the light around the heavens, but the moment around the light, which speaks its word to you through the red-burning fiddle of my nerves.
Echo, what a bright and luminous day has crossed my path today.
from fun mir tsu dir, nayste verk IV, (New York: Freiheit Publishing co., 1932), 141
Comments