In Betweenness
is it a good thing to find
two empty pages between the day
before yesterday & yesterday
when trying to make room
for the blue opera afternoon
of today a sunday like any sunday
in may?
there is no one could tell
or judge though my own
obsession with the in between
should dictate the answer
& thus let me rejoice at being able
to insert today between the
day before yesterday & yesterday
as if it were the yeast of night
allowed these spaces to open
(do not say holes to grow)
in the spongy tissue of this
my papery time-space discon-
tinuum—
leaven of earth leaven of writing
of running writing to earth
in these in betweenesses that now
please as much as the opera in ear
that asks que dieu vous le rende dans
l’autre monde but the desire is to stay right
here in this world this in between even as
the sound changes the radio sings son
vada o resti intanto non partirai
di qua
exactly my feeling sheltered on these
pages now filled and pushing up against
yesterday
Copyright © 2014 by Pierre Joris. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on January 22, 2014. Browse the Poem-a-Day archive.
“The concept of the in-between (between languages, places, cultures, states of being or, better, becoming, etc.) has been core to my poetics. The title of my next book, Barzakh, is the Arabic word that describes the realm of ‘In-betweenness’ (same realm that the Tibetan Bardo Thödol or The Egyptian Book of the Dead explore) & quotes Ibn Arabi, the great Sufi mystic, as saying that finally, actually, ‘there’s only in-betweeness.’ And thus it is also the pattern or weave of our daily life—an occasion of which the poem tries to explore.”
—Pierre Joris
Pierre Joris
Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age eighteen, he has moved between Europe, the U.S., and North Africa and holds both Luxembourgian and American citizenship.