only time is now.
only tense present.
doing. see. believe.
thick heat of haut-lang-
uedoc. hot garrigue
rasping with crickets -
impossibly green
as avocados.
dead snake on the path.
lizards on limestone.
the flashing blue wings
of brown grasshoppers.
singing, singing, ev-
'rywhere singing, in
my head, all in my
head, my heart chalk-soft,
ravined and singing,
lonely as landscape.
imagination
richer than knowledge.
zen, just zen, pure zen!
In the 60s and 70s, many poems were written like this; that is, a succession, a list, of impressions and observations which did not form a whole as a poem. These were also called "Zen", that indeterminate, elusive state. But Zen did not release poetry from its obligations.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Don't quite agree with you though — that a list of impressions can't be poetry. I tried to formalise it somewhat with five syllables every line. A creative tension between looseness and structure?
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