Читать книгу Letters from Max - Sarah Ruhl - Страница 31

LISTENING, SPEAKING, AND BREATHING

I.

Pianos are told to repeat

the grieving tones of a bird.

How does the bird focus?

How does the piano focus, in turn?

II.

Wind is a force through air.

Air is the soft gilding powder of the chest.

The soft gilding powder that departs

into the shaking mural of the blood.

III.

Sense is not the same as essence.

Essence is entangled with the sliver of my voice.

Life might be very small victories and meanings.

Is saying “joy” a joyous thing, in and of itself?

IV.

Even if the tune seats the sense for an instant,

like a cloud through which blue is visible.

The red stripe of piping beef circling down

obnoxiously murmurs at death till it hushes.

V.

I have never listened, alone.

Always a guide, a fabric of love and need, absorbing in the ear.

Even the unlistening God

listens more than your own life.

VI.

Love comes from the mouth or in the heart

open on both ends, a craggy tunnel.

The impure love I make is all I know,

but its contents insist that there are others to make it.

VII.

To listen alone might find me

for once assured of a meaning in me.

Distraction, love, companion of narration,

you are not silence.

VIII.

In case of silence, could I cope?

The slender rod of my sense

white and pocked and feathered,

draws a triangle of fire in pure salt:

IX.

This shape is what is required to denote nothing more than me:

no unessential tissues, leaves, ponds, or songs.

I am boiling tar, transformed, or a thing in tar,

a thrill of heat or still a bone.

X.

If I am still an object,

then we’ll know that, won’t we?

I hope then, you’ll talk to me,

and I promise I’ll make sense of you.