Saturday, February 23, 2008

To a Kingdom We Once Parted From...







Stan Brakhage, The Garden of Earthly Delights

The history of paradise is perhaps not a fable: looking, speaking must have been born when one ceased to exist completely in the world ... the world of flowers and snowflakes on flowers.

~ Philippe Jaccottet, Truinas, Le 21 avril 2001



At night when the small orchestras travel home,
tall trees stand along the streets like gates
of soundlessness, like high candelabras
before a universe we do not grasp.


For soon all the sounds in the world will go home and sleep
and all the colors will get tired of coloring
and travel away from us to unknown places
and everything will be rubbed by soft cloths
as now, tonight, by powdered-silver rain
to a kingdom we once parted from
and the silence will break out
in all the trees.

~ Rolf Jacobsen