“Poetry
aims to express by means of language precisely that which language
is powerless to express.”
—Paul Valèry (429)
“It tries to tell you/like a mirror: look,/see, the
sky/under your feet. Elusive,/
a dare, an inch/of water enough/to drown in. Everything/that
happened to you/
begins here/and you could fall through it.”
—Sue Sinclair (52)
in the eye (of
contemplation
it tries to tell you like
a mirror
how to listen past
the edge
of drying up puddles. past the edge
of
an autumn maple leaf. past
the edge
of a word
fresh
with
fallen rain—
in the eye of
the mind pooling.
look see
the sky under your feet
elusive (a whisper of syllables)
in
need of attention
shriveled
around the edges: last night’s
words.
is poetry a pathology? a dare
an
inch of water
enough to drown in?
look see
the way rain teaches
asphalt of
its depressions.
turns
them into eyes
full of shifting
clouds
(inside
memories’ splashing feet.)
and
you wade through.
everything that
happened to you
begins
here— the way
pavement
embraces sky the way
you are drawn
to this moment
of
not-pavement
and
you could fall through it.
References:
Sinclair, S. (2003). Mortal arguments.
London, Ontario: Brick Books.
Valèry,
P. (1971). On Poets and Poetry from the notebooks (J. R.
Lawler, Trans.). In J. Mathews (Ed.), The Collected
works of Paul Valery ( Vol. 1, 397-429). Princeton. NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Acknowledgements:
in the
eye (of contemplation was
first published in Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant voices
in the social sciences ( SensePublishers, 2009).
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