The rest of The Interior Prisoner
7.
A lexicon contains words as a prison contains men.
At most I make the prisoners merry enough
to forget their chains for a n hour.
What sentence would free them?
8.
The light advancing across the face of the wall . . .
A discovery of the Indies,
enacted each morning like clock work
9.
Their need
- to drink, to quarrel, to display -
is not so much their sickness as their wealth
10.
There is a fountain
lulled by its splashing
and recirculating waters
into so deep a sleep
it forget it's a fountain.
In the heart of that sleep it dreams of a fountain
11.
A prophet covered in blood,
a baby howling warnings
in the dead of winter
to frightened ignorant villagers
who stifle its cries
for fear of murderous soldiers.
That is what they call Christmas.
12.
The saint turns life inside out
so that the death side shows.
They expose death to ordinary daylight,
as if in life they were already a head on a platter
or a body shot full off arrows.
This provokes horror and amazement among the onlookers,
whose first instinct is to side with the Roman soldiery
and exterminate the monsters.
13.
Being is a mouth
with which an unknowable word articulates itself
in a language which is a partial imprint
of something prior to speech,
like the impression left in the grass
where an animal has rested.
14.
The pilgrim retraced his steps
to the point where he went astray
and found no path or hole.
This barricaded thicket
was indeed his native country.
On that spot
he built a shrine
to the patron saint of desertion.
15.
Our history begins
with the description of an injury
whose particulars were never before written down.
The wound does not heal
but from now on it can never be forgotten.
We have made a language
sacred to the memory of pain.
16.
Not even as many notes
as would make a song,
not even as many syllables
as would make a name.
Just enough air
to make a breath:
that is the prairie, the kingdom,
the boundless estate.
17.
Day wasn't long enough
for more than a few words:
nerve, cobweb,
fracture, lichen, bud,
the goat's anxiety,
the telescope
the previous tenant left behind.
Whatever else was said
got torn apart
when the rain drove through.
A lexicon contains words as a prison contains men.
At most I make the prisoners merry enough
to forget their chains for a n hour.
What sentence would free them?
8.
The light advancing across the face of the wall . . .
A discovery of the Indies,
enacted each morning like clock work
9.
Their need
- to drink, to quarrel, to display -
is not so much their sickness as their wealth
10.
There is a fountain
lulled by its splashing
and recirculating waters
into so deep a sleep
it forget it's a fountain.
In the heart of that sleep it dreams of a fountain
11.
A prophet covered in blood,
a baby howling warnings
in the dead of winter
to frightened ignorant villagers
who stifle its cries
for fear of murderous soldiers.
That is what they call Christmas.
12.
The saint turns life inside out
so that the death side shows.
They expose death to ordinary daylight,
as if in life they were already a head on a platter
or a body shot full off arrows.
This provokes horror and amazement among the onlookers,
whose first instinct is to side with the Roman soldiery
and exterminate the monsters.
13.
Being is a mouth
with which an unknowable word articulates itself
in a language which is a partial imprint
of something prior to speech,
like the impression left in the grass
where an animal has rested.
14.
The pilgrim retraced his steps
to the point where he went astray
and found no path or hole.
This barricaded thicket
was indeed his native country.
On that spot
he built a shrine
to the patron saint of desertion.
15.
Our history begins
with the description of an injury
whose particulars were never before written down.
The wound does not heal
but from now on it can never be forgotten.
We have made a language
sacred to the memory of pain.
16.
Not even as many notes
as would make a song,
not even as many syllables
as would make a name.
Just enough air
to make a breath:
that is the prairie, the kingdom,
the boundless estate.
17.
Day wasn't long enough
for more than a few words:
nerve, cobweb,
fracture, lichen, bud,
the goat's anxiety,
the telescope
the previous tenant left behind.
Whatever else was said
got torn apart
when the rain drove through.
posted by TheFuriousGourmet | 8:10 PM
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