7/16
Everyone who has ever sat down and said, I should write a book. With all of this inside me. With all of this summer. And immediately the finger keyward falters? And there is a silence that is actually so real and actually so true. One blames oneself but the silence is actually so true. And you must know that this is the thing that everyone finds eventually. The muteness itself, the muteness at the heart of it. That which compels speech but does not speak. Yes.
A muteness overtakes me. Even the trees have gone still. Mmmm I say. Mmmmmmm. To be able to open my mouth. Ma, I could say. Ma, my first word in this new life, if only. But not yet. Maybe actually never.
Something everyone finds eventually. Imagine for a moment that upon dying you then awaken. Dead I repeat but now awake, yes, still, eyes closed, there in the dark, in the hole, unmoving, without even the mmmm, and you think, this is what everyone finds out eventually, everyone who has ever lived. Billions! The growing crowd, pharoah and all. Listening. Hear now, above, the footfalls of the unbelieving. Silent endless life after life in the hole. Unable to say -- unable to even find the mouth to find the words. And then only just to say what everyone finds out eventually. A muteness that is actually so true. This, but for life, but for summer ---
But there we were, above the ground, trying again to speak of summer, saying a thousand things, none of them what we meant, the way new lovers must not (!) say I love you but instead a thousand other things, gushing out, forced to the surface by the pressure of the unspoken, the unspeakable. And how the words from a distance made a starling cloud of what you meant. And thus the trees began to move again. And thus the summer resumed. Vibrant world. And the silence kindly stayed silent while you spoke. And so on. And on and on. And on and on. And on and for life and yes for summer on.
7/17
Where are we going with our clothes all in tatters
Where are we going with our shoes at our sides
In the open air, in the paling sky
On a workday
The balcony was a dream, even then as now
The olive, or the scent of olives
And you
So much even then an old woman's memory of herself
In her famous dress. But nevertheless
Take my hand, here the city thickens
Take my hand, here the morning quickens
And falters into memory
As our impressions in the grass
The unperceptive grass
Taking traces of a lifetime
As it rises
In the morning