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Hand of the grain the sand smote

Originally Published: January 14, 2010

The constellations are rising in perfect order: Taurus, Leo, Gemini. Without her audience the actor does not really exist, and for her audience her transient art takes shape each time the auditorium is hushed and darkened. Go back to the beginning. The end. And Sir Thomas Browne, who was the son of a silk merchant and may well have had an eye for these things, remarks in a passage of the Pseudodoxia Epidemica that I can no longer find that in the Holland of his time it was customary, in a home where there had been a death, to drape black mourning ribbons over all the mirrors and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruits of the field, so that the soul, as it left the body, would not be distracted on its final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land now being lost forever. And so “into the great sea”. I tie the neck to whip: opposing grief knot, preventing fray. Being the first flash of fire as nebulous emblem from her waters. Proceed with abandon, finding yourself where you are, and who you’re playing for, what stray companion. Just the first few strokes in the shallows. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past. I hope to see you later. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us. End with a view of our two heroes leaning over their desk, copying. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. My hope is that I remain bound to you. My hope, which is valid through 05/14/04. I’ll always drink it up. I know that’s what heaven is – a big What Was Stray Is Found Now pre-soccer pep scrum arm-in-arm “that’s my guy!” or girl or bird or dog or merrily actually y’all come. It’s so quiet now I can hear the clicking of the traffic lights changing…red to green…stop to go. Walk. Wait. I, Tarcisius Tandihetsi, say so.

Author of eight books of poetry and numerous chapbooks, Anselm Berrigan earned a BA from SUNY Buffalo…

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