David Kling

 “Speech is always the speech of authority (to speak is always to speak according to the authority of speech). But there’s no sceptre for the one who writes, even disguised as a beggar’s stick: nothing to lean on and no moving along” 

Maurice Blanchot

We walked along ancient waterways

singing lamentations after a storm.

Some heaved curses into the air,

others thrashed the ground. Our echoes

followed us from behind, pushed through

the eyes of a sieve. 

We spoke before and we spoke after.

Propped by broken truncheons, we sought remorse 

under the willow tree, and we carved it in silence.

There was no moving beyond this -- neither space nor time 

would permit it. There was no moving beyond.

And yet we scattered, each took a branch,

and we wandered, weeping, in a circle

(tears have their site)

beyond reparation.

But what transformation! We know nothing of gods,

and we had forgotten that we didn’t know.

This is what we wrote

with whittled bark.

The Mind does not speak -- it keeps its secrets.

We walked, then, along ancient waterways.

We did not know what we owed, 

yet our debts compounded.

A gentle breeze broke our thoughts

and guided us to even gentler pastures

where we forgot nothing,

where we remembered nothing.