Backward Miracle
by Kay Ryan
Every once in a while
we need
a backward miracle
that will strip language,
make it hold for
a minute: just the
vessel with the
wine in it—
a sacramental
refusal to multiply,
reclaiming the
single loaf
and the single
fish thereby.
! this one prompts me to cuss like the proverbial sailor!! yes!!!
ReplyDeleteand another by phillippe jaccottete:
Letter of 26 June (which i find to reproduce here from james's site:)
From now on let our life be told to you by birds.
A man would churn out too many tales
and all you’d see through his words would be
a traveler’s lodgings, a window
where tears have misted a rain-shattered wood….
Night settles. You hear voices under the lime trees:
the human voice shines like the earthward gleam
of Antares which is sometimes red, sometimes green.
*
Don’t listen anymore to the din of our worries,
don’t think about what has happened to us,
forget our name, too. Listen as we speak
through the voice of day, and let there be only
daylight shining. When we come to be drained of all fear,
when death seems to us mere transparency,
when it is clear as the night air in summer
and we are carried by lightness, flying
through all these imagined walls the wind leans on,
all you will hear is the sound of the river
flowing behind the forest, all you will see
is night’s eyes as they gleam….
*
When we shall speak with the voice of the nightingale….
(Translated by Jennie Feldman)
xo
erin
A backward miracle. Now that's something to meditate on for a long time, Sister....
ReplyDeletelord help me, i can't spell: philippe jaccottet))
ReplyDelete