-a picture… held us captive. and we could not get outside it…

for it lay in our language

and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

(L. Wittgenstein)

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK…

… is a man!
How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculties!
in form and moving how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

(W. Shakespeare)








A PROPHETIC DREAM …

It is not given to me to be myself –
I am not alienated
Rather, I am definitely Other —
The Otherness which erupts into my life
with stunning clarity —
in the shape of a gesture, a face, a form, a word —
A Prophetic Dream —
a witticism, an object, a woman, a desert…
Inasmuch as my life is played out within the Other,
it becomes a mystery to itself –
Inasmuch as my will is transferred to the Other,
it becomes a mystery to itself –
The Other is what allows me not to repeat myself
for ever ————————

(J. Baudrillard)








THE GRAVEDIGGER …

OCEAN OF EARTH …

I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against
the windowpanes
House of dampness
House of burning
Season’s fastness
Season singing
The airplanes are laying eggs
Watch out for the dropping of the anchor
Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own
gravediggers

(G. Apollinaire)




I DREAM …

that I am Oedipus.
What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.

(S. Plath)




SHE GIVES HIM EYES …

she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles
He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment
She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her
He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous
Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up
And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it
They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step
And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

(T. Hughes)












THE TRUE WAY …

is along a rope that is not
spanned high in the air,
but only just above the ground.
It seems intended more to cause stumbling
than to be walked along.
(F. Kafka)








WE ARE THE MIMICS …

CLOUDS …

are pedagogues
The air is not a mirror
but bare board
Coulisse bright-dark
tragic chiaroscuro
And comic color of the rose
in which
Abysmal instruments
make sounds like pips
Of the sweeping meanings
that we add to them

(W. Stevens)








FLYING INSIDE YOUR OWN BODY …

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking …

(M. Atwood)












YOU, DARKNESS …

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! –
powers and people-
and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.  

(R.M. Rilke)








THE POET …

is a light
and winged
and holy thing,
and
there is no invention in him
until he has been inspired
and
is out of his senses,
and
the mind
is no longer in him

(Socrates)








LET ME NOW …

And a desire endlessly yearns for that
Which is unbound. There is much to
Hold on to. One must be faithful.

Let me now fall silent.

(Hölderlin, A Letter)