I am writing this in code because I cannot speak or say
the thing. The thing which should be, or I so wish
could be
plumbed fathomed disinterred from this silence, this ever thickening
silence through which, once, the long thin stalks & stems, first
weaker weeds then branching &
stiffening, steadying &
suddenly sturdier –
strong enough to carry the seen – the seeming autocorrect reminds me –
the meaning my mind offers rushing in here
such that I must pull it back here –
grew. They, or is it it
grew. I
turn to the dead more now,
clearer every day as I approach them,
there in their silky layers of
silence, their wide almost waveless ocean
rolling under their full moon,
swells striating the horizonless backdrop,
extending what seems like forever
in that direction –
though what can forever mean where there is
no space no time. I breathe
that in
and stare at it. I breathe,
I have an in and
out. I should have mentioned earlier this autocorrected to
breed. I had thought to ignore it but what a strange thing
how we expanded,
spread ourselves in smaller and smaller bits
across the natural world
until we were so thin with participation we
fell away.
Remember the code says the away.
But I was saying
how finally the rain will come. Finally it will I say in the code – &
you do intuit my meaning do you
not. It is a rain I have waited for all my life –
why do I see it only
now for what it
is – yes bronze as the sun tries to hang on –
then all these platinums braiding its freedoms,
coursing to find every crevice, loosen every
last stitch &
go in. It will touch everything. It will make more of the
more. More says my baffled soul, yes more.
It will push itself through & more deeply through till all must grow.
And yet we pray for it.
We thought it would never come.
Something did come says the code.
But it did not come.
Not in reality.
We thought it was an ideal.
Therefore it must come.
But it did not come.
How I wish I could say free. And yet we are not free it
seems. Or are we.
Each word I use I have used before.
Yet it is not used, is it? It is not used up, is it? Because what is in it stays
hidden. And the words
appear again as if
new. Rain, I say. Rain now.
And the black ocean shows itself in infinite detail because of the moon.
No matter that all is not lit.
Much remains because much remains hidden.
And you, are you there in the hidden.
Nothing is rare.
All gleams.
And you there, gather these words up now & store them as seed.
Wait for the next rain.
In the world we lost there are those who knew if the lifesaving
rain would
come in time – if it would
actually fall – not pass us by again as a prediction, as
mist. They knew from
the birds. I
am still here with the birds for this while longer.
I do not know what they say.
Dust rises.
Evening sets.
I listen to the chatter.
I remember the clatter of sudden rain. The clapping of it onto the
hard soil.
The birds roost.
Among them a silence now & one singer briefly singing. Then silence.
We must all wait together.
There is no way to know.
It did not come.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Jorie Graham · Poem: 'Translation Rain' · LRB 9 September 2021 - London Review of Books - Translation
Labels:
Translation
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