#144

Between oolong in the mouth, oolong
   in the nostrils, there's
an absolute gulf. On that sea, stars
   are winking bubbles
left by the first passage of Sxwaixwe.

01 18 92

   "The House in Bonac Revisited

I am in love with the impossible:
From the beginning, I have tried to bring
Into the toils of language the fierce thing
No word may gather and no tongue may tell--
And it was in this room that first the spell
Was cast upon me for a curse, to wring
My heart in labor and in suffering,
Under these rafters that I love so well.

How many a night, how many a lonely year,
With mind grown bitter and with blood gone dry,
I have wrought these cunning toils! Nevertheless,
All longing was repaid, all bitterness,
In moments when my heart stood still to hear,
Even for a moment, that fleet foot go by."

--John Hall Wheelock, in: This Powerful Rhyme, ed Helen Plotz (1979)

'This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.'

--Ono no Komachi in The Ink Dark Moon (1988) tr Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani

"We are living even now among punishment and ruins." --Wendell Berry

Stonehenge Aotearoa. (via Metafilter)