Cartographies

Ten Versions of Ruin and Repair

26 TenVersions of Ruin and Repair 1 We break what holds us. Still, powerful arms close around us. Odd, this nervous greed for change. And yet wise men will say greed and generosity are evidence of love. Perhaps love is grief for the flesh. 2 The news we hear every night is a kindling for the future. What can anyone tell us that we didn’t know? Take this town with its open secrets, its crowded gardens and dazed scorpions. It’s a place of noisy breathing. For here, like anywhere else on earth, even the thorns are mystically inclined; every branch opens its arms to the universe. 3 I’m crying, so my tears tell my cheeks. It seems there’s this constant conversation between heaven and hell, silence and speech. Sometimes I’m ashamed of using words, for the gold dish of the moon is more real than the blue table I set it down upon. 27 Yet I see how lovely and strong the meaning of each thing is. Forget this life, I say to myself. 4 A girl runs barefoot through the house. Outside, the white narcissus feeds on quiet, while I sink to the bottom of my life like a fish falling asleep in its tank. Wake up! Stop making excuses. It’s time to grow a new tongue. 5 We’ve seen magicians levitate themselves, from thin air materialize scarves, handbags, bewildered rabbits. Neither accidental, nor done with mirrors: such intelligence is substance. Indeed, Einstein knew this equation. Surely, when we look for God, God is in the look of our eyes. Even the unfaithful wear this gaze. 28 6 What I can’t understand is why the dead long for what bruised them. And why the living vote for politicians who argue in favor of oblivion. A pitcher shatters, the river meanders on. We all yearn for the alchemy of verbs. 7 I am the seashell lying empty on the beach— you are the water flowing toward it. Not that I’ve done much to deserve the attention, but, somehow, the stage has thus been set. No mercy for the earthbound! So, I’ll love you even as you retreat from me. But how is it you can breathe without a body? And how can you interpret the sky so well? There is only this one sigh between us. 8 When I see a woman’s life torn into a thousand pieces, or a man whose face is a blackened stone, or a child whose heart has been ransacked, I know that when one of us lets go of our compassion, even for a single moment, 29 the whole world collapses again. Pain teaches us how destitute we are, how brief. I think it’s the mother of us all. 9 The world hurts me with its questions, with its stupid and true answers. What I need is a circle of wind, a ring of thunder around me— I need the kind of shining only the ocean absorbs, and the stars. 10 There is a strange frenzy in my blood, a red flurry, a rush of sparks. Something invisible and dangerous moves through me, from the soles of my feet to the graying roots in my scalp. Am I insane? Don’t come near me. Friend, for fifty years I’ve called out. And for what? For this air? This poetry? Gaze into my silence, cries the page. And I listen. (after Rumi) ...