You do not always know what I am feeling.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
this isn't how I planned for
my life to look like," I whispered
under my breath as I walked to my car
"tell me about it,"
an eavesdropping cloud
replied to me from above
I looked up and watched
the cloud billow between looking
like a dove and an open hand
the cloud continued:
"I used to be a snowfield in Montana.
I used to be a dewdrop kiss on a lily.
I used to be a puddle in a parking lot.
I used to be a river in Mexico.
I used to be a glacier.
I used to be a waterfall mist in a jungle.
I used to be so many things.
"doesn't that make you sad?" I asked the cloud
"it used to - but not anymore," the cloud replied while wrapping herself around me like a scarf. "I don't think either of us were created to stay the same form our entire life."
"I’m not sure I can let go of my old life," I sighed
"oh you simply must," the cloud whispered in my ear.
" because once you release what you used to be
and embrace who you are meant to be now -
something amazing will happen," the cloud said
"what's that?" I asked while looking at my hands that were beginning to billow and shapeshift.
"you'll start to float."
and with that my feet lifted off the ground
One of these boats carried Mary, put to sea by the Romans, the crying woman, hands wrapped with rags that smell of myrrh. And...
