She heard sparrows (Virginia Woolf)
Something making a sound never made before, a series
of slurred whistles in increasing tempo common, uncommon,
invented for the sake of geography, birds of the air, the narrow eye ring
a song from a branch of artemisia absinthium
and bathing in indentations, a scattering of wings scattering dust,
the rapidly unforeseen, something not exactly bird-like,
night falling in layers, as the iconic aspect of all things hidden
in paper and feathers, the brushed technique of feathering to absence—
after a time the more they sound like creatures falling
outside the imaginable, rustling, unfolding,
a doubling of moments of having been here before,
a feeling of transparent thickness over-layering,
then the sparrow speaking four or five times prolonged and piercing
in Greek words, from trees in the meadow
beyond a river where the dead walk, how there is no death.
No comments:
Post a Comment