Zwijgen (audio only)
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The Song in the Dream
The song itself had hinges. The clasp on the eighteenth-century Bible
had hinges, which creaked; when you released the catch,
the book would sigh and expand.
The song was of two wholes joined by hinges,
and I was worried about the joining, the spaces in between
the joints, the weight of each side straining them.
2001
Inside
No one to hear but Records for the broken player. No reason for order but order persists, from breakfast to bath to work, rain falling at one speed, the windows darkening and blurring, accident beating against belief. A loud engine, which is one way to say one thing. The floors swept daily, though it takes at least one hour for the first, one for the last. In the pages of a book, quick studies of gesture, tents of hands.
2005
This Hour
This hour, while a child sleeps, before he wakes
and those arcadian hours we make together—
is it a continued arch, vaulted, open at both ends, is it
a bending?—recommence. Yes, a bending.
Light before you’d call it light bluing the sky.
The old city below, a fidget toy’s
string of buildings; doves calling and answering
from ledges in the cavities; a low
branching into divisions of memory;
a hot afternoon’s lunch on the grounds
of the museum, children at play in
tethered circles; traffic and voices from the avenues
2017