As if from the Shipwreck we returned - A Neruda Cento

Climbing vines murmured as we passed.

The gray stones knew us - the wind

in the shadow. Between you and me

a new door opened.


All that we learned was of no use:

we emerged from the ocean

as if from the shipwreck we returned.


Everything carries me to you:

aromas, light, metals,

boats filled from within with black light,


there too I would like to let my blood sleep

against the devil's webs,

     against organized misery.



You have seen the same sky each day,

the same dark winter mud, the endless branching

of the plum trees and their dark-purple sweetness.



Night has fallen for you.

Perhaps at dawn we shall see each other again.

 
 




Cento Source Text: The Captain's Verses Pablo Neruda , 1952
Image: Fisherman at Sea by William Turner

Smudges - an erasure

The first morning:

those first disquieting hours

trying to distract myself,

wandering, listening, wondering how

we still know less than nothing.



I never realized

how everything is permeated,

the heavy noontime air

alive with shimmers and mirages.



However much we didn't want to,

however little we would do about it,

we'd understood: we were going to perish

of all this, if not now, then soon, if not soon,

then someday.


I remember

starlings beneath the eaves,

carats of nightfall,

every sidewalk scribbled with hearts.











Source text: Tar by C.K. Williams.

Paradise Lost: an erasure

Restore us, chaos

I invoke thy Song,

       
the vast in me is dark.



Nine times the Space that measures 

Day and Night:



Let us not slip.



Let us rest if any rest can harbour there.