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Salvaged Parts
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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42 Salvaged Parts Fire took the house. Black bricks tell how it went. Wild roses try to say it never happened. A rock my foot pushed falls for years down the cellar stairs. . . . No thanks, no home again for me— Mine burned before it burned. A rose pretends, but I always knew: a rose pretends, a rock tells how it is. 43 Only by sending roots deep does the treetop avoid the ground. A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say. It is disquieting to teach, or lecture. I want to be in the back row again. I’ve got in a lot of trouble in my life by being careful. Time has separated into events. Between them time rests. Moments of the wind, then nothing. The world leans against the door, and the latch moves. The world is an old place. Everything has already happened once. Surrealism relates to the little hump of help attention needs toward perceiving the less than obvious. Writing must learn to be as easy as talk. [18.117.81.240] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:20 GMT) 44 Rocks that fail become sand. The world has great power to preserve itself—it still squeezes people between the mountains and the sea. Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye. You can be too well prepared for poetry. A conscientious interest in it is worse than no interest at all. If you analyze it away, it’s gone. It would be like boiling a watch to find out what makes it tick. The arts maintain the life that realizes while it is lived. Treat the world as if it really existed. Please don’t turn the windmill off even at night when it creaks or the tank is full—there are some flowers by the overflow pipe. ...