There she was, dizzy and heavy; her past revealing itself to be as full of possibilities as the future. Oh more than the future. Because the past has the richness of whatās already happened.
I am made of urgencies:
my joys are intense;
my sorrows, absolute.
I fill myself with absences,
empty myself of excess.
I do not fit the narrow
I only live in extremes.
Little does not serve me
average does not satisfy me,
naives were never my strength!
All great and small moments,
made with love and tender care,
become eternal memories to me.
Words may win me over for the time being...
But actions either keep me or lose me forever.
I suppose understanding me is not a matter of intelligence but of feeling, of making contact...
Either it reaches you or it doesn't. -Clarice Lispector
āFull is not heavy as empty, not nearly, my loveā āI donāt want a home, Iād ruin that,
Home is where my habits have a habitat.ā āāmember when I was so sick and you didnāt believe me?
Then you got sick too and guess who took care of you?
You hated that, didnāt you, didnāt you?ā āI ran out of white doves feathers,
to soak up the hot piss that comes from your mouth every time you address meā āIām a tulip in a cup,
I stand no chance of growing up,
Iāve made my peace Iām dead Iām done,
I watched you live to have my fun,ā I could go on and on but these are just some that came to mind
1
There was a time
only certainty gave me
any joy. Imagine ā
certainty, a dead thing.
2
And then the world,
the experiment.
The obscene mouth
famished with love ā
it is like love:
the abrupt, hard
certainty of the end ā
3
In the center of the mind,
the hard pit,
the conclusion. As though
the fruit itself
never existed, only
the end, the point
midway between
anticipation and nostalgia ā
4
So much fear.
So much terror of the physical world.
The mind frantic
guarding the body from
the passing, the temporary,
the body straining against it ā
5
A peach on the kitchen table.
A replica. It is the earth,
the same
disappearing sweetness
surrounding the stone end,
and like the earth
available ā
6
An opportunity
for happiness: earth
we cannot possess
only experience ā And now
sensation: the mind
silenced by fruit ā
7
They are not
reconciled. The body
here, the mind
separate, not
merely a warden:
it has separate joys.
It is the night sky,
the fiercest stars are its immaculate distinctionsā
8
Can it survive? Is there
light that survives the end
in which the mindās enterprise
continues to live: though
darting about the room,
above the bowl of fruitā
9
Fifty years. the night sky
filled with shooting stars.
Light, music
from far away ā I must be
nearly gone. I must be
stone, since the earth
surrounds me ā
10
There was
a peach in a wicker basket.
There was a bowl of fruit.
Fifty years. Such a long walk
from the door to the table.
__
FromĀ The Seven AgesĀ (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2001)