Towards the Day of Liberation

Photograph by Ed Buziak


TOWARDS THE DAY OF LIBERATION


It doesnt matter what we see there
(the mouth is full of sense
no taste in listening
no sense to hear
what twists in the shallow water below the tongue)

(and if he says Listen! say
Drink the hearing with
your own ears, a word
is not to hear)

Language? To use language for the sake of
communication is like using a forest of ancient
trees to make paper towels and cardboard boxes
from all those years the wind and crows danced
in the up of its slow.

A word is not to hear
and not to say -
what is a word?

The Catechism begins:
Who made you?
Language made me.
Why did It make you?
It made me to confuse the branch with the wind.
Why that?
To hide the root.
Where is the root?
It lies beneath the tongue.
Speak it.
It lies beneath the speech.
Is it a word?
A word is the shadow of a body passing.
Whose body is that?
The shadow's own.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on Nicole Peyrafitte