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And of the Words Afterwards
- University of Illinois Press
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17 And of the Words Afterwards And afterwards, what: a crowd of vacant cells?—the offered words catapulted from their husks on Ālaments, tethers to the far, the desiccated, body, or a hope unraveling, hope of return—and the sound of the voice decaying in the atmosphere to an inaudible flat, the membranes of sound like wineskins, emptied each of the perceptible tones, and some animal, a badger or fox, left trotting across its expanse of land, a fording amidst the wisps of shapes evaporating in the air, and the spilling sounds thinning more and more faint, meant now for other, for the smaller ears, directions to the unfurling blossom, for you, honeybee of the miles, for you, inchworm toward the leafbud— And now the ants lining up to trespass, and now the spinnerets oiled, now the chimney swifts a rattling in the sky, adrift—though the scent of the cut still lingers— But if the wisps gathered, if a bouquet of long slender stems—the voice, is it really gone? (Or, other, do the emptied vessels sink, Ālling with the sky-weight, do they gather, condense in dermis, settling sheer onto the grass, the left vellum aloft on new blades for inscription—?) The river carries the dropped petals away from the reflection of branches and out toward the center, to the sky’s reflection—the petals like colored sails for the liquid wind of that sky— ...