In the Presence of Absence

You grow up at the edge of a world falling apart behind you, and yet to form before you, a world tossed like a stray stone in the game of fates. You ask yourself: Who am I? —Mahmoud Darwish


Now here we are, clinging to opposite shores,
Each reaching a hand out toward the river’s
tongue, thinking somehow our tongues
might save us this time, break
the spell if we could just name it.
—Meg Kearney


You had to choose the margin to know where you stand. The margin is a window looking out on the world. You are neither in it, nor outside it. The margin is a cell without walls. —Mahmoud Darwish


Words. Scattered shards of words.
Gestures of intent and accident.
Idiomatic fragments of yesterday
intimating possible futures.
Yearning for embrace. —DB


One word
—one stone
in a cold river.
One more stone—
I'll need many stones
if I'm going to get over.
—Olav H Hauge


You cannot see what lies ahead clearly. But a horizontal gravity thrusts you into the thick of tomorrow, to an enchanting unknown in an unfinished poem you are about to begin. —Mahmoud Darwish


When one letter is brought together with another, that is to say one absurdity with another, an obscure form reveals the clarity of a certain sound. This slow clarity opens a path for meaning to take the shape of an image. —Mahmoud Darwish


Letters of the alphabet go to war, clinging to one another, standing up, forming words no one wants to shout, sentences that are blown by the mines in the avenues... —Lesyk Panasiuk

NOTES
This, as with much of how we sense, is out-of-context and so very close…
— Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), Palestine’s esteemed poet. Excerpts from his final book, In the Presence of Absence (trans Sinan Antoon), an extended mediation on life, an elegy. As such, a guide.
— Meg Kearney from Curse in An Unkindness of Ravens, 2001
— Olav H Hauge (Norwegian 1908-1994), trans Robert Bly
— Lesyk Panasiuk from the anthology In the Hour Of War:  Poetry from Ukraine, 2023)
— DB, this author, from the assemblage Salvage Poetry.

CODA
Words are waves. You learn to swim from the seduction of a wave that wraps you in foam. Words have the rhythm of the sea and the call of the obscure: Come to me in search of what you know not, the blue called out to you. —Mahmoud Darwish

Moments in The Dream::September 23

… Live like the grass, not asking: who you are.
Flow like water, not tempting memory.
— Anzhelina Polonskaya

The Marriage Contract


Still Life: The Arrangement


So Much Depends on a Red Pail


Gathering Time


New Map of the Known Universe


Web Hypnotic

Hands of the the Storytellers


She Who Sees All Who Come and Go


Trade for Space


SILENCE Is Deafening


In the Beginning: Erasure


H E L L O ! (G O O D B Y E?)


The Anniversary Celebration

NOTES
Anzhelina Polonskaya from the poem Photo Albums in Paul Klee’s Boat: Selected Poems (2013), trans from Russian by Andrew Wachtel.
Born in Malakhovka near Moscow, Polonskaya, a former figure skater who is banned from publishing in Russia but is translated and published in English by Zephyr Press, lives in Germany.
Anzhelina Polonskaya Discusses Censorship in Russia 2019

    Photo Albums

No question, the first things to be cursed
are photo albums: a girl with a ball and mommy.
A bench, the lilac bush should all be cast onto a bonfire.
And the sun declared outside the law.
Call some thieves - let them make off with the iron bedsteads
where we slept long and straight.
Then cut down the rowan by the fence
so we can't bury the dog beneath it.
There's no call to cry over emptiness.
And without the past in your pockets,
live like the grass, not asking; who are you.
Flow like water, not tempting memory.

TWO CHAIRS 2

Air spanned, passage waited, the balance rode, 

Nothing prevailed, whatever was in store, 

Witnessed itself, already taking place 

In a time marked by assent and by hiatus.

    — Seamus Heaney

Two chairs cushion possibility. Any horizon mirrors a dreaming beyond utility. Sit, unfolding. Witness, holding discrete revelation, a quiet recognition. The moment glimmers. Yielding smiling stars who delight in constellating the stories you wish seek to say tell. Sit, listen. Absence of words said. Sighing, instead.

FURTHER

— TWO CHAIRS 1 posted July 1 2022. Click link or menu to 2022 July.

NOTES

— Seamus Heaney (1939-2013, Irish) from the poem Squarings in Seeing Things (1991)

— Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008, Palestinian) from In the Presence of Absence (2006), trans from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon (2011)

Be me so I can be you! Rise up so I can carry you! Come near so I can know you! Go far away so I can know you! 

    — Mahmoud Darwish

FORCES OF HABIT

“… the Secretary (of Defense Austin) will be directing multiple forthcoming force posture moves to bolster force protection for US forces…” — Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, Press Briefing, August 2, 2024

"...global defense is dynamic..."

"...evolving national security threats..."

"...ironclad support..."

"...international rules based order..."

"...future defensive force posture..."

"...further escalation is not inevitable..."

 

In the rush-wave of current spectacle, history fades to shadow, memory hovers out of sight, ghosts decry…
The now past yesterday when/where “news” — on-the-ground unrelenting brutal for some and on-line imagined thumbs-up/thumbs-down for many — is marked/noted/managed unrelenting stream of “live” minutes… rededication to the forces of each cycle, the very inevitable forces of habit. —DB
 

NOTES
— Captions/phrases from Sabrina Singh’s press briefing statement, August 2, 2024. (Link)

— Murals at City of Eugene Skatepark by Portland artist Ashley Montague painted in 2014 on pillars of Washington-Jefferson freeway bridge as the I-105 connects with 7th street in west Eugene.  Art ever evolves —  damaged without repair by Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) during bridge reconstruction about five years.  Layering cumulative graffiti... art, concrete cuttings, pipes, spray-can washes, random scribblings — ongoing urban forces of habit.

Bronze Ambition

 

This is not about you.
Transfixed in our bronze ambition
Our gaze ellipses seething desire
Claiming a seat in place we recall remembering.

Our stages are plays within plazas of forgetting
Invisible in a confirm legitimacy.
What we knew as necessity you discover
In passing your indifferent reverence.

We night-day unmoved signal to every bronze figure
Hot-cast monumental and sea-melt dissolution
Before and after erected and disappeared
Our tribe of memory absent forgiving.

AFFIX 1
How many walking wheeling drifting by consider Rosa Parks settling on a bus? Ken Kesey furthering on the bus? Eugene Skinner gazing at his butte? Envision a living roundtable:  Ken and Rosa nodding either on-or-off the buses. Eugene and Ken considering country living on partitioned Kalapuyan riversides. Rosa and Eugene agreeing to difference and distance.

AFFIX 2
Three “life-size” figures in small plazas share surprising communalities. Each representing a once-living person of various fames and infamies.  All seated allowing space to sit-in next-to. As they stare-gaze occupied with the lost longings, vague necessities, decisive concerns. Looking ahead down no way nowhere highway. Statues do not witness. They bestow absence, accreting in patinaed past. Smooth surfaces of memory congeal. Stasis of polished bronze, empty gestures, once brimming with resounding urgencies, showtime news, echo and recede ...

NOTES  
— Photo of the three sisters who dashed up as I was studying the Rosa Parks sculpture was done with parental approval.
— The three artworks, all commissioned since 2000, are within 2 blocks of one another in downtown Eugene. I was involved in managing the commissions for the Eugene Skinner and Ken Kesey statues. For artists, facts, myths — the usual suspects — lookup in Wikipedia:
    Statue_of_Rosa_Parks_(Eugene,_Oregon)
    The_Storyteller_(sculpture)
    Statue_of_Eugene_Skinner

No False Shadows

“It is clear that we need

Is it possible?

 

 to act fast 

We have been hoping for this such a long time…

 

to reduce greenhouse gas

Is it possible?

 

emissions to avoid 

Do it quickly, then, quickly,

 

the worst

but is it even desirable? 

 

outcomes of global warming.”

We no longer know…

CLARIFICATIONS re the intertext
— “It is clear that we need to act fast to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst outcomes of global warming.”  A statement (a well-intended slow statement reduced to avoidance) by Xin (Lindsay) Lan, a CIRES scientist in NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) who leads the reporting of greenhouse trends. Dr. Lan specifies: “The acceleration of atmospheric nitrous oxide growth in 2020-2022, as seen by NOAA’s global greenhouse measurements, are particularly concerning in this critical time when global greenhouse gas levels need to plunge.” (Do gas levels have needs? I do find plunge a compelling word! There's hope!) June 12 2024 NOAA News Release

— Is it possible? We have been hoping for this such a long time… Is it possible? Do it quickly, then, quickly, but is it even desirable? We no longer know… — Henri Michaux from the prose poem “Space of the Shadows” in Facing the Locks (Face aux verrous, 1954) trans David Ball.  Michaux continues:  Watch out. You'll hear from me later. I have to watch out. The hyena-shadows are ceaselessly searching in the night.

— Images: No False Shadows sur/faces photos by DB aka this TBV blogger recalling Michaux, once again: Even if it's true, it's false.

CODA
We are not what we are. Our tragedy is that we don't even know it. The world is not what we think it is. It is fathomlessly alive. None of us is a single entity, we are many-formed, polytropos. Everywhere, all the time.
— Kapka Kassabova, from Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time (2023)