There are words inside me, inside us, that no-one will ever know. I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm dying but it's really just living. There are words, foreign, obsolete, ancient, still dry on your tongue. The dead words of our future. Words erased by light; words forgotten in the dark. Yet you read my silence...In the dark I look out to the night. I think of you. And see my reflection. When I speak I often forget what I was saying or why. When I read from a book my train of thought is broken, as if you just entered the room. In the morning I need to stop myself. Fragments of stories are recalled: the search for Z; Andree lost; the red queen.... then I think: maybe all stories were just one story.
Better to contemplate the blank page
And leave it blank
Than modify
Its substance
By so much as a pen-stroke
Woven of wood-nymphs
It speaks volumes
No-one will ever write.
---Derek Mahon.
You kept an image of me close by. We spoke to one another like children, so that no-one else could hear, my name dying on your lips. In the land of the black sun there are no words, except for one. Did you really exist? There's no place left where I can be dealt fresh wounds.
I was kept from harm by a word found in nobody's heart.
(photo courtesy of Roxana)
5 comments:
thank you for honouring me by borrowing this picture :-)
i am sorry to torture you with such pragmatic questions when you write so beautifully, but who is "Andree lost"?!!!
http://bagginsandco.blogspot.com/2010/06/andree-we-were-already-ghosts.html
ahahah
i see i have already asked this question - and both time with the same amazement (given that my other name is Andreea). now i won't forget (i will, though, perhaps i like imagining that you wrote something dedicated to me :-P)
what an interesting coincidence, though, that there is an explorer named Andree...
Oh, I don't want to disappoint you Roxana but these were just some of the stories I'd posted about before and that first came to mind: the search for Z was the first post, for example. So, unless you have another name starting with 'Z' and you're a red queen there isn't much of a coincidence! :-) sorry!
but yes, I can dedicate it to you (though that might ruin your imagining!) since it was your wonderful photo that helped me put the Ovid bit into some focus. Danke.
keep well,
b.
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