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Eric Sarner

… HOLDING AFLOAT …

for Ismaël

Amid the Whitenesses, in the all open,

There, in the

In - should it be -

The primal Whiteness,

Swarms of images pile up,

In the

In the heap of

Transparencies,

Drags of black rocks fallen from the sky,

Shawls of snow coming alone,

Bodies of flesh, bodies of bones,

Choosen poverty :

No other way, ever since before history,

But to face Darkness,

To crush the

To thwart

The Fate of Dying.

For the Past is moving towards us

Like the Angel with his back turned,

The Angelus Novus, lost in the future.

The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,

and make whole what has been smashed.

But a storm is blowing from Paradise;

it has got caught in his wings with such violence

that the angel can no longer close them

(Walter Benjamin)

And yet,

God,

The ancient lines,

The most simple things,

Most frugal and shining,

The muzzle of some animal,

A small child going back to sleep,

Some long-keeping wine beaming among thorns,

Our heads in diapers,

Close to our panics, against them.

O, but we would need so much

So much strength

To come through them all,

To come through

All the images,

Not that they pass through us either,

Rather that we learn

How to drill into them

So as to see their backs.

Still,

Doing this,

We would be naked,

As we are now

Exactly,

Naked amidst the blood,

In the

In a final Whiteness.

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