Sound, too? The recorder
that picks up everything picked
up nothing but the natural
background. What language
does the god speak? And the camera's
lens, as sensitive to
an absence as to a presence,
saw what? What is the colour
of his thought?
It was blank, then,
the screen, as far as he
was concerned? It was a bare
landscape and harsh, and geological
its time. But the rock was
bright, the illuminated manuscript
of the lichen. And a shadow,
as we watched, fell, as though
of an unseen writer bending over
his work.
It was not cloud
because it was not cold,
and dark only from the candlepower
behind it. And we waited
for it to move, silently
as the spool turned, waited
for the figure that cast it
to come into view for us to
identify it, and it
didn't and we are still waiting.
By R.S. Thomas
from Frequencies (1978)
Tag: fell
‘The air is split into black branches’ by Velimir Khlebnikov
The air is split into black branches,
like old glass.
Pray to Our Lady of Autumn!
The windows of autumn’s chapel,
smashed by a hurtling bullet,
are wrinkling.
A tree was burning,
a bright spill in the golden air.
It bends; it bows down.
Autumn’s flint and steel angrily
struck the sparks of golden days.
A forest at prayer. All at once
golden smells fell to the ground.
Trees stretch out – rakes
gathering armfuls of the sun’s hay.
Autumn’s tree resonantly evokes
a sketch of Russia’s railroads.
The golden autumn wind
has scattered me everywhere.
by Велимир Хлебников (Velimir Khlebnikov)
a.k.a. Виктор Владимирович Хлебников
(Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov)
(1921)
translated by Robert Chandler
In Great Waters by R. S. Thomas
You are there also
at the foot of the precipice
of water that was too steep
for the drowned: their breath broke
and they fell. You have made an altar
out of the deck of the lost
trawler whose spars
are your cross. The sand crumbles
like bread; the wine is
the light quietly lying
in its own chalice. There is
a sacrament there more beauty
than terror whose ministrant
you are and the aisles are full
of the sea shapes coming to its celebration.
by R. S. Thomas
from Frequencies (1978)
Rambling At The Bridge Head 