Monday, March 30, 2009
Poem from Ning's blog
It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — these are the things that
eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.
The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a
crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.
Meditation on Ruin
by Jay Hopler from Green Squall. © Yale University Press, 2006.
***
It's not the lost loves, it's me, and the hundred things I take in, most times without noticing, or caring, maybe. It's the hundred unreleased sighs, the hundred tears that never fall for a hundred ignored slights by a universe that keeps on rolling away, turning and turning, sometimes too fast that you can hardly keep up, sometimes too slow you barely noticed that you've been pushed to a space you never wanted to see.
It's the crack in the water glass, the microscopic crack that s growing under your nose, the one that starts with an invisible tear. The one that's always sitting on its place beside the bed, the one that you carry with you from kitchen sink to a spot beside your sleeping form, the one that carelessly siphons your carefully made iced tea to an alternate universe, to a nightmare, to a once unimagined broken you.
It's a slow, yet ceaseless unraveling that begins even before the tapestry has been completed, even as you are picking the colors of the threads.
The truth is everything is flimsy, or will be, given time. Everything breaks, everything dies. Everything falls, everything comes to ruin. Even if it's just the wind brushing against the cheek, the little unremarkable bits come undone, grain by grain, flake by flake. And the crack grows and grows, until that's all there is. And we're no longer even there to notice what's gone.
or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — these are the things that
eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.
The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a
crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.
Meditation on Ruin
by Jay Hopler from Green Squall. © Yale University Press, 2006.
***
It's not the lost loves, it's me, and the hundred things I take in, most times without noticing, or caring, maybe. It's the hundred unreleased sighs, the hundred tears that never fall for a hundred ignored slights by a universe that keeps on rolling away, turning and turning, sometimes too fast that you can hardly keep up, sometimes too slow you barely noticed that you've been pushed to a space you never wanted to see.
It's the crack in the water glass, the microscopic crack that s growing under your nose, the one that starts with an invisible tear. The one that's always sitting on its place beside the bed, the one that you carry with you from kitchen sink to a spot beside your sleeping form, the one that carelessly siphons your carefully made iced tea to an alternate universe, to a nightmare, to a once unimagined broken you.
It's a slow, yet ceaseless unraveling that begins even before the tapestry has been completed, even as you are picking the colors of the threads.
The truth is everything is flimsy, or will be, given time. Everything breaks, everything dies. Everything falls, everything comes to ruin. Even if it's just the wind brushing against the cheek, the little unremarkable bits come undone, grain by grain, flake by flake. And the crack grows and grows, until that's all there is. And we're no longer even there to notice what's gone.
9:48:00 AM
