| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Blindfold yourself with some suitable object. If time permits remain still for a moment. You may feel one or more of your senses begin to swim back toward you in the darkness, singly and without their names. Meanwhile have someone else arrange the products to be used in a row in front of you. It is prefereable to have them in identical containers, though that is not necessary. Where possible, perform the test by having the other person feed you a portion -- a spoonful -- of each of the products in turn, without comment. Guess what each one is, and have the other person write down what you say. Then remove the blindfold. While arranging the products the other person should have detached part of the label or container from each and placed it in front of the product it belongs to, like a title. This bit of legend must not contain the product's trade name nor its generic name, nor any suggestion of the product's taste or desirability. Or price. It should be limited to that part of the label or container which enumerates the actual components of the product in question. Thus for instance: "Contains dextrinzed flours, cocoa processed with alkali, non-fat dry milk solids, yeast nutrients, vegetable proteins, agar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, dried egg yolk, GUAR, sodium cyclamate, soya lecithin, imitation lemon oil, acetyl tartaric esters of mono- and diglycerides as emulsifiers, polysorbate 60, 1/10 of 1% of sodium benzoate to retard spoilage." Or: "Contains anhydrated potatoes, powdered whey, vegetable gum, emulsifier (glycerol monostearate), invert syrup, shortening with freshness preserver, lactose, sorbic acid to retard mold growth, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bisulfite." Or: "Contains beef extract, wheat and soya derivatives, food starch-modified, dry sweet whey, calcium carageenan, vegetable oil, sodium phosphates to preserve freshness, BHA, BHT, prophylene glycol, pectin, niacinamide, artificial flavor, U.S. certified color." There should not be less than three separate products. Taste again, without the blindfold. Guess again and have the other person record the answers. Replace the blindfold. Have the other person change the order of the products and again feed you a spoonful of each. Guess again what you are eating or drinking in each case (if you can make the distinction). But this time do not stop there. Guess why you are eating or drinking it. Guess what it may do for you. Guess what it was meant to do for you. By whom. When. Where. Why. Guess where in the course of evolution you took the first step toward it. Guess which of your organs recognize it. Guess whether it is welcomed to their temples. Guess how it figures in their prayers. Guess how completely you become what you eat. Guess how soon. Guess at the taste of locusts and wild honey. Guess at the taste of water. Guess what the rivers see as they die. Guess why the babies are burning. Guess why there is silence in heaven. Guess why you were ever born. |
Shortly before dawn he burrows into the sky and begins to sing. One by one the stars turn to the other side to hear him, and their light leaves ours and fixes on the small black insect singing of the world that they will never see because it is on the side from which they have turned. As long as it is day here he sings to them and we do not even hear him. And as soon as our light has gone he stops and comes out and sits on the sky, having done his work, and then they turn one by one and try to see the world of which he has been singing. All night their faces burn through the darkness, empty but hoping. "Noon" He who is wearing the helmet of Death is walking at the foot of the walls. The shadow of the enormous casque falls over his body like a bell. He lets others do his shouting for him. No one shouts. Wearing the helmet of Death, he turns. He waits. Around him the empty plain, and the dead, who have taken the form of doors, each standing by itself, locked, with no shadow. Large birds alight, bringing their own shadows to walk on, and disappear behind the doors. He is wearing the helmet of Death. While he wears it no weapon can touch him, no sound can startle him, no sight can move him. No one dares fight with him. The silence is his triumph. But Death has missed the helmet. "Humble Beginning" When he had learned how to kill his brother with a rock he learned how to use a rock to begin stairs. For both secrets he thanked the rock. He considered the rock further. It had always been there keeping secret what it could do. It had never so much as hinted at what it had already done. Now it was keeping all of its other secrets. He fell on his knees facing it and touched it with his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his lips, his tongue, his ears. He thought the rock had created him. He thought that. |
"When You Go Away" When you go away the wind clicks around to the north The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls Showing the black walls The clock goes back to striking the same hour That has no place in the years And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes In one breath I wake It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth I remember that I am falling That I am the reason And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy "The Room" I think all this is somewhere in myself The cold room unlit before dawn Containing a stillness such as attends death And from a corner the sounds of a small bird trying From time to time to fly a few beats in the dark You would say it was dying it is immortal "The Hydra" No no the dead have no brothers The Hydra calls me but I am used to it It calls me Everybody But I know my name and do not answer And you the dead You know your names as I do not But at moments you have just finished speaking The snow stirs in its wrappings Every season comes from a new place Like your voice with its resemblances A long time ago the lightning was practising Something I thought was easy I was young and the dead were in other Ages As the grass had its own language Now I forget where the difference falls One thing about the living sometimes a piece of us Can stop dying for a moment But you the dead Once you go into those names you go on you never Hesitate You go on "The Asians Dying" When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains The ash the great walker follows the possessors Forever Nothing they will come to is real Not for long Over the watercourses Like ducks in the time of the ducks The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky Making a new twilight Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead Again again with its pointless sound When the moon finds them they are the color of everything The nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed The dead go away like bruises The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmlands Pain the horizon Remains Overhead the seasons rock They are paper bells Calling to nothing living The possessors move everywhere under Death their star Like columns of smoke they advance into the shadows Like thin flames with no light They with no past And fire their only future |
"The Owl" These woods are one of my great lies I pretend oh i have always pretended they were mine I stumble among the smaller lies as this night falls and my pretenses likewise and your voice begins who need no hope to hunt here who love me I retreat before your question as before my own through old branches who am I hiding what creature in the bowels quaking that should not be raised against the night crying its truth at last No I who love you find while I can some light to crawl into maybe I will never answer though your dark lasts as my own does and your voice in it without hope or need of it calling what I call calling me me ~You who are never there~ "The Different Stars" I could never have come to the present without you remember that from whatever stage we may again watch it appear with its lines clear pain having gone from there so that we may well wonder looking back on us here what tormented us what great difficulty invisible in a time that by then looks simple and is irrevocable pain having come from there my love I tend to think of division as the only evil when perhaps it is merely my own that unties one day the veins one the arteries that prizes less as it receives than as it loses that breaks the compasses cannot be led or followed cannot choose what to carry into grief even unbinds will unbind unbinds our hands pages of the same story what is it they say can turn even this into wisdom and what is wisdom if it is not now in the loss that has not left this place oh if we knew if we knew what we needed if we even knew the stars would look to us to guide them "The Hands" I have seen them when there was nothing else small swolled flames lighting my way at corners where they have waited for me cut off from everything they have made their way to me one more day one more night leading their blood and I wake to find them lying at home with my own like a bird lying in its wings a stunned bird till they stir and break open cradling a heart not theirs not mine and I bend to hear who is beating "Presidents" The president of shame has his own flag the president of lies quotes the voice of God as last counted the president of loyalty recommends blindness to the blind oh oh applause like the heels of the hanged he walks on eyes until they break then he rides there is no president of grief it is a kingdom ancient absolute with no colors its ruler is never seen prayers look for him also empty flags like skins silence the messenger runs through the vast lands with a black mouth open silence the climber falls from the cliffs with a black mouth like a call there is only one subject but he is repeated tirelessly "The Free" So far from the murders the ruts begin to bleed but no one hears our voices above the sound of the reddening feet they leave us the empty roads they leave us for companions for messengers for signs the autumn leaves before the winter panes we move among them doubly invisible like air touching the blind and when we have gone they say we are with them forever "The Plumbing" New silence between the end and the beginning The planet that was never named because it was dark climbs into the evening nothing else moves moon stars the black laundry the hour have stopped and are looking away the lungs stand a frozen forest into which no air comes they go on standing like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city the buildings vanished the windows extinct the smoke with its strings of names wiped away and its fire at the still note the throwing of a switch only these pipes bereft of stairs of elevators of walls of girders awakened from lamps from roofs grow into the night crowding upward in rows to desolate heights their blind hope and their black mouths locked open hollow stars between the dark planets a famine a worship the heirs of the dials among their feet my heart is still beating by itself thinking it understands and might feed them "A Door" (from "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment") This is a place where a door might be here where I am standing in the light outside all of the walls there would be a shadow here all day long and a door into it where now there is me and somebody would come and knock on this air long after I have gone and there in front of me a life would open |