Moonlight all around
Cut-up poem using found lines from the Magical Realist Fiction anthology from Dr. Theodora West’s continental literature course, circa 1985.
A man and frau stand beside a craggy tree
gazing at the moon, expecting the impossible,
bodies steaming thickly, more and more unable to move.
What a death it was, two months long and so loud!
Big strangers, faces no longer familiar to anyone,
turning to porcelain, without a nose.
What happens next is absolutely unknown.
I’m on an urgent journey, a thick blizzard of snow.
I can’t figure it out, events fog up completely.
Utter nonsense is going on in the world.
I am no world reformer, will you save me?
I do not have the strength to pray.
I want to push open a window.
What am I doing in an endless winter?
The vanishing things leave nothing but their names.
I made an indescribable effort to muster myself.
I could not collect it. It flew away.
Let nature take its course.
Mystics fall back on symbols,
a bird that somehow is all birds,
a poor boy past helping in a blue room
or the green of the garden.
I know now that there is nothing strange.
It has to occur,
like the axe we hardly hear
in the forest below,
above us moonlight all around.
