Jan Zwicky
“The Spires of Martinville”
Four Square Garden
(Pasdeloup Press, Department of Fine Arts, University of Waterloo, Ontario)
[1981]
In the summer’s air, light-dappled, wading through
young poplars by the barley’s green fur rippling
before the wind, I cannot find my way, […]
I like how the incongruence of the barley’s green fur leads one to get lost in the metaphor. The tactile and the visual battle for attention. And rest assured that we recover the ground in our incomprehension:
[…] to know
that one should comprehend, yet no more
— perhaps this is the thing itself, its measure
neither in pain, the silence, nor the loss,
but in the unrelinquishing — heart’s memory
with a patience more merciless than the sea’s.
Barley fur lodged in memory — the thing itself — no forgetting.
And so for day 2536
22.11.2013