A quote: “It is not only that the imagination adheres to reality, but, also, that reality adheres to the imagination and that the interdependence is essential.” (Wallace Stevens)
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Io get my book: www.umass.edu/umpress/spr_99/donovan.html To check out Oat City Press: www.oatcity.com
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Recommended links:
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Crystal Ball / 1000X From that moment on, I felt about me and within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. — Jorge Luis BorgesI look at velvet darkness magnifieda thousand times or more. It’s stillthe same black doorway, deeplybrushing past the curtained iris.Retinal memory of day blazesdown the hall but nothing breaksthis intersected lightuntil the melt begins to cool.I wait for it to happen,balanced tightly on a line of sightat which I am not practiced.Quietly, the microscopist zeroes in.I say, I’d like vacationing in liquidform, but he says crystal seeksa state of rest inside straight walls,wants its suitcase to stay packed.The home I love’s a thousand miles away,one word I must fish up and set in placedespite the mad cascade wrens poureach morning from the roof.I pin my name to yesterdayand stare into the polished lens:if I die before I wake . . .My face erases in its glare.That’s when the night explodes from randompoints a pyrotechnic stab, all astersburst across the field in sped-up time,violets, daisies, clover’s raspberrystar silvered blue and green to fillthe spectrum’s architectural paradise.It happens fast, before you’d choosea certain step toward any next address,as if some clicking in your dreams had spunits choices out. It happens last.What is this stuff, I ask, spellboundby iridescent seasons in my eyes.It’s DDT. He says it painfully.These roses have thorns.Oh, how do we manage to live here,beauty that cracks our hearts and alwaysthis way, a dry branch across its knee.A child, I shut my eyes and pressedmy fingers to the lids until the colorsbled and flashed free movies to my brain.The minutes throbbed their gay illogicthen went black. I’d stop, for fearthat what I saw would make me blind,and how would I explain the causewas only curiosity and loveof what was marvelous? I’d have to say more,and I did not know what to say.I touch the slant of smoky quartzI keep as pocket charm.If thorns have roses, perhaps griefwill have its house of rest,and if I’m lost so soonalong the path confused in petals,may true north find me hesitating there.
