Homages to Porchia

• The imagination begins from what is

not what is not.

• A letter is always arriving, always

opening itself in my hand.

• In darknesses, all darknesses fall away

from the body.

• When the words of the dead are remembered,

lips move in the grave.

• Having seen the death angel early, I was meant

to mourn for life.

• With each silence, the angel

flies through the room.

• Lips at my ear:  the angel is here.

• Ghosts speak out for rescue.  Bereft,

I search and search.

• When the angel wakes, he calls me,

and I always obey,

sleeping then in his cold place.

• There was a pinhole where

I could see the whole

landscape of myself;

but I lost it, refusing

to look.

• I speak, I listen and seek over my life

like a bat, for the echoes of sound things.

• When I failed to cultivate a memory of objects –

pottery, spoons, the razor, measuring weights,

postage stamps, the coffee cup, the pen –

the metaphors of my life disappeared.

• I wish for what is never and it is infinite.

• You have asked me to estimate the numbers of

my lost feelings,

and I am grateful.

• To write is to contain, to hold

the true against the true.

• The visible wound distracts us from

the invisible bleeding.

• There are things that are not mysteries.

All words explain them.

• For each person born,

a fable of glass begins.

• The truth is action, it moves.

All these words are lies, and they remain.

• If you are a magician, unlock my life.

• My hand wears the glove

that writes these words.

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