Dampened

[rejectomorph]

I heard the calls of unidentified waterfowl as their flocks flew over the house in the rain. They must be enjoying it as much as I am.

My thoughts are adrift of late, and I haven't figured out why.

As usual, somebody else can say it better.



Sunday Verse

Octavio Paz

Immemorial Landscape

for Jose de la Colina

Airily flutters
               slips
among branches   trunks   poles
lazily
      hovers over
the high electric fruit
it falls
        aslant
              now blue
on the other snow

                 Made
of the same immaterial as shadow
it casts no shadow
                  As dense
as silence
          this snow
is snow, but it burns

                     Headlights
drill quick tunnels
                   collapsed
in a moment
           Night
riddled
       grows inward
grows night
           Obstinate cars
go by
     all
in different directions
to the same destination

                       One day
the streetlights will explode
from their iron stalks
                      One day
the bellowing river of engines
will be choked
              One day
these houses will be hills
once more
         the wind in the stones
will talk only to itself
                        Aslant
among the shadows
                 unshadow
will fall
         almost blue
on the earth
            The same as tonight
the million year old snow

-translated by Eliot Weinberger