(no subject)
Epistemology
If you do know that here is one hand,
we'll grant you all the rest.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Because there were no hands, they were
completely absent. I don't mean this as a joke. Nothing
prepared me for it: it was like a dream.
That's why. Because I've tried hard to forget.
And, without warning, I could tell that I was
seven storeys in the air. The fragrance of the earth
when I lay down on it. Because
I'd pulled the fuses from my heart
and every corridor was suddenly ablaze.
Because things like that don't happen on the bus.
I mean that when I stepped out on that plain,
I'd been alone for years - it was
the breath of spring, and it was snowing.
Because it was a river in my heart, because
it moved like winter underneath my skin. A tree
came into leaf behind my eyes.
It woke me up.
The silence sparkled. Imagine
singing without sound, because it was
like that; and when I think of it at lunch,
Liz, Shelley talking about movies, Gerry
hockey, Bruce about the mayonnaise,
I start to cry. Because my body
was a flock of horned larks and my bones were
bells. It didn't care - that's how I knew.
Because it was the opening of an eye. And, yes:
because it was against all reason.
Jan Zwicky