The First Walk
We are guided. We are we. Foxed and shaded, sliding over the surface
of civilization which is reading behind us or reading inside us is a
civil contract shattering in its choices. There is the Styrofoam cup
and the paradise that is likely not quite ready for us, crushed. The petal in
the hand that disappeared within
The petal was another one; it undid, and then one again, one pale room
over the market turning pink. It is early in the rhythm of the theater of
the soon. We walked the vowel into an archive through windows rent
apparent by bombing, entirely morning — light can seem to strike light in
a spear that breaks, but we are used to the broken, and so built a library.
.
The Second Walk
And thanking memory, we spent every afternoon in a park, hiding
a different century my guide with the endless peaches, and then
suddenly a fig. Suddenly threw our class affiliations into striking
relief, and disappearing to everyone but ourselves, we let time slide
through us. Yet cannot deny: we felt hands too dragging through
our own, leaving empty. We were not alone. There were the many
rooms, and through them moved another hundred years, my guide
continually suggesting that: “Any rain makes yet another, smaller
room for us” and “This, too, will refuse to vanish at the least” and
asks of what are we the medium and can we haul behind us this
minor fountain, this gallery after gallery of reflective glass in which
falling water takes part, taking apart the faces, for instance, ours
pressed against the panes of a greenhouse trying to put a name
to the living there.
.
