28 December 2008

Mark Strand

[from Mark Strand's Blizzard of One, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998]

A Suite of Appearances
(part III)

How it comes forward, and deposits itself like wind
In the ear which hears only the humming at first, the first
Suggestion of what is to come, how it grows out of itself,

Out of the humming because if it didn't it would die
In the graveyard of sound without being known, and then
Nothing would happen for days or weeks until something like it

Came back, a sound announcing itself as your own, a voice
That is yours, bending under the weight of desire,
Suddenly turning your language into a field unfolding

And all the while the humming can still be detected, the original
Humming before it was yours, and you lie back and hear it,
Surprised that what you are saying was something you meant,

And you think that perhaps you are not who you thought, that henceforth
Any idea of yourself must include a body surrounding a song.

Blizzard of One: Poems

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