Waking up to bird song in the morning, With a memory of names lost to not Attending enough to this world that Is contained in itself, and happens to Contain him always. Once he was given Vocabulary to point to creatures Of leaf and wing, to take them in Through language, and so accommodate Himself in a house that is landscape.

So to be rendered homeless again, Or even worse to be exiled is to have lost The language to name the signs that sing: Violet crocuses – first letters of spring, Star magnolias teething white, the blood Of Judas trees awakening, and the wake Of Canada geese honking north to home.

Citizen tax collector, honestly, the poet spends a fortune on words… Suppose only half a dozen unheard-of rhymes were left, in, say, Venezuela. And so I’m drawn to North and South. I rush around entangled in advances and loans.

Citizen! Consider my traveling expenses: Poetry – all of it – is a journey to the unknown.

(Trans. from Russian by Max Hayward, George Reavey)

“I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details.

“Wanderer tritt still herein; Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle. Da erglänzt in reiner Helle Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein” - Georg Trakl, “Ein Winterabend”*

So much unfinished business that the mind Keeps, running over and over to lick old bones

Seasons roll like lovers over the unnoticing body Rain changes to mist, mist to sun and wind,

All in a winter morning’s hours. Yet we see Very little of these presences, this time

A friend writes, “The taxi on way home, Wendell Berry on the radio, and me bursting into tears”

What we forget to remember always, I suppose, Is this feeling of radiance, which sometimes comes

Unexpectedly in silence, with bread, wine, words, Beyond the great fires, beyond pain’s threshold.

January 2, Dhamma Siri, Kaufman Texas

*a translation here