297. an egg in a hand as a voice in a body and nothing separate

( )


found

            there were children in it
            they came in the form of children

Lost Angeles

            (it was a place they has heard of)
            and simply what they were

            only with the advent of time and opportunity
            would there be a sense of direction to it

            yet there was a going-forth that could not be extended past its limit
            even if the limit were never

found


(a)


preserved

            a duck’s egg kept
            in clay and ash, in salt and lime and rice hulls
            for months till

            albumen turns gelatin (
            a translucent porcelain

            the yolk becomes creamy )
            grey-green

deserved

            or these fragments of a movement through
            these flickerings of an action done
            these saved bits of daily human exploit

            the record of a house
            the record of a mind
            the record of body

corporate

            made and kept in a body
            made of a body of knowledge and kept
            bodily made to be bodily kept

            the record of a hand
            the record of a heart
            the record of blood

preserved


(e)


a hill of chapels

            a chapel is a place to hold a sound
            as a hand holds an egg
            in place
            that it might sound and still remain

            trees as a place
            with trunks for boards
            and holes of light through branches for the windows
            chiaroscuro and enough for a voice to hold

            a voice and a violin
            and a viable vision
            of what rests behind
            and beyond the voice

seen in a time of green

            every child green

            stains of grass upon the knees
            stains of tears upon the cheeks
            and what rips apart

a hill of chapels


(i)


who am here an

            audience to my own voice
            word to my own sentence

            sentenced to lines
            lined up into reasons

at the barrier of the sea

            the water for the beach
            the beach for the sky
            the sky for the trees
            the trees for the night

at the barrier of the see

            seems like a barrier
            seems like a barrier between
            seems like one

            between a realm and a vision
            a constriction and a ranging

            and what is kept of it
            to be remembered of it

who am here an


(o)


what seems

            is what is
            it is what it is
            it is in what it is in
            it is in if if what it is in is in if

the play of

            meaning against sense
            record against action
            getting against forgetting

            and not for all of us
            (never for all of us)

replayed

            in a mind
            in the thinking of a thought
            in the production of a page
            in a petabyte of data as a record of one life

            what is the value of forgetting is

what seems


(u)


lost

            those like the children who sing with their tiny voices
            and those who don’t sing
            the times when you do not sign a name for there is no name for you

            though not you
            just the thought of you
            not as you but as one
            conceived as a you
            since there is no the you

body as breath

            and the voices out of the air

body as breaking

            and the scar is the record of it

body as burden

            and you suffer the little children to come forward for it
            their tiny voices
            breaking as eggshells give way
            to a complete and swallowable fact

body as birth

            so you are born
            and bone and blood
            and being and built

body as berth

            so you must sleep

            as I must eventually sleep
            as words must give way to something like sighing
            or the saying of it

            each time we remember
            the record not kept
            the record not seen
            the record not made

            and everything becomes in an instant
            and disappears in the next

            and so

            every flickering version
            of a self
            of a flame
            or the flutter of light
            against a frame that holds in place

            an egg in a hand

            and complete

            as a voice
            in a body

            and complete

            as if we know
            what there is

            and are not at all ourselves

lost