We are in a garden, at night.
Corollas heavy with condensed
moonlight. Maybe each is a moon,
and that seems as natural as
the statues here. They are missing heads,
arms. Naked torsos, breasts and thighs
perfumed with hyacinth.
Their feet grafted into the soil, and
below the whorl of bats we can just make out
statues that have fallen over. Hands are appearing
out of the shoulders, eyes starting to grow
from the neck. We now see by the light of the corollas
they are statues of us, the hands, the eyes are ours,
emerging from stone which has emerged
from the soil. The eyes reaching, the hands seeing
past this garden—a shimmering line,
symbols improbable but just as natural
as anything else: lines, light—
where the horizontal afterglow of a twilight
caught in its own regression, and it begins
to make sense, now, surely as infinity.
It begins to make sense of infinity. We are not
oblivious, because we can pretend
not to see these buildings at our backs.
We thought they were painted black, but that is
just the night. We thought we could even see
them if we turned around fast enough. No.
Only the fallen statues of us. And the dread
that maybe we are the buildings, too.
A city of bodies, built out of bodies, great towers
of flesh, that disappear each time we try
to see them. Left only with the afterimage,
which, of course, are ghosts. As real
as a line, as light, as real as the hyacinths
even though we can't see them, because they are
moons. And why shouldn't they be,
because there is death and
death is a body.
Not a symbol of death, but
death—the line shooting outwards at both ends
to infinity; and light, carrying with it time
outwards to make the edges of everything.
We are lucky to be statues, buildings, and
it is miracle to be at all.
This is when we fall over, and hands, eyes
emerging from the torsos, in which
there is a heart, truly beating.
We are lucky, for the bats whorl over our heads
in this garden, at night.
John K., 9/3/2009, 10:47-11:33PM
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