are you dreaming, Frederick?

"I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves 'Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.' "
--Kurt Vonnegut


"Marsh Languages"
The dark soft languages are being silenced:
Mothertongue Mothertongue Mothertongue
falling one by one back into the moon.

Language of marshes,
language of the roots of rushes tangled
together in the ooze,
marrow cells twinning themselves
inside the warm core of the bone:
pathways of hidden light in the body fade and wink out.

The sibilants and gutturals,
the cave language, the half-light
forming at the back of the throat,
the mouth's damp velvet moulding
the lost syllable for "I" that did not mean separate,
all are becoming sounds no longer
heard because no longer spoken,
and everyone that could once be said in them has
ceased to exist.

The languages of the dying suns
are themselves dying,
but even the word for this has been forgotten.
The mouth against skin, vivid and fading,
can no longer speak both cherishing and farewell.
It is now only a mouth, only skin.
There is no more longing.

Translation was never possible.
Instead there was always only
conquest, the influx
of the language of hard nouns,
the language of metal,
the language of either/or,
the one language that has eaten all the others.
--Margaret Atwood


"Clementines"
I have learned this way how
to choose the clementines from the bottom drawer
(in November)

first pausing with the door open, and
rubbing my knees together,
remembering other clementines

then feeling each rough orange skin
until there is one that gives and also
does not give

(the distinction between too-soft
and too-firm, that
ripe middle, that fine line)

next a sojourn on a couch, and the slow movements
of my left thumb, to see
if I can peel the skin in a single helix

of porous color externally
and the white-soft within
(this is what leaves the smell upon my fingers)

and lastly I have learned this way how
to choose the clementines and nick the seeds
from the flesh with my teeth

a breath of their taste
just sufficient to know
if they are good enough

for you.
--Jaida Jones


"Requiem"
The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do."

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
--Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country, pg. 137


"The Bicycle"
once
forgotten by tourists
a bicycle joined
a herd
of mountain goats

with its splendidly turned
silver horns
it became
their leader

with its bell
it warned them
of danger

with them
it partook
in romps
on the snow covered
glade

the bicycle
gazed from above
on the people walking;
with the goats

it fought
over a goat,
with a bearded buck

it reared up at eagles
enraged
on its back wheel

it was happy
though it never
nibbled at grass

or drank
from a stream

until once
a poacher
shot it

tempted
by the silver trophy
of its horns

and then
above the Tatras was seen
against the sparkling
January sky

the angel of death erect
slowly
riding to heaven
holding the bicycle's
dead horns.
--Jerzy Harasymowicz


"For a Five-Year-Old"
A snail is climbing up the windowsill
Into your room, after a night of rain
You call me in to see, and I explain
That it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
That no-one squashes it. You understand
And carry it outside with careful hand
To eat a daffodil.

I see then that a kind of faith prevails,
Your gentleness is moulded still by words
From me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
From me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
Your closest relatives, and who purveyed
The harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your Mother,
And we are kind to snails.
--Fleur Adcock