Aught, no. 15 (2006)


John Gimblett

Ether

What's in the slow blood

pumps to a slow rhythm.

Backwards in time the stuff

of redness blends, slips

seamlessly into disaster

as if drawing on a spirit to

empty its calling. I am the

leveret bounding in a short

field, going nowhere. Up-

wards I am viable; there is

no other dimension worthy

of me. In Kashmir there is a

footstep I left: it traces the

death-flat marble of whiteness

flooring the Hazrat Bal. On

a bicycle I crushed walnuts,

twisting their etiolate juices

into the road. In Pahalgam I

died a metaphorical death;

climbing down from the

meadow to an iced stream,

it's as if the water pulled my

soul from my fingers. Now,

when I try to reach out and

grasp my existence, it flows

like so much sterile water

into the gulf. Die before you

die.

 


Copyright © 2006, by the author. All rights reserved.
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