daydreaming



from Burning Towers, Standing Wall

(...)

An index finger dressing a joint will
fix in the mortar its mark, an intimacy
to surpass every other gesture the hand
has made. What went on
behind these walls and who stood here
and hissed out or was massacred
so that our imagination of them is saturated
with encounter? And what do they frame
if not the intuition of our relation,
a resonance? They who heard also
the echo of hammers and dogs upwelling
into their hills. And followed Venus with their eyes
on its transverse. And stood near this same wall
noting the caliber and flow of a stream of urine.
Two stones butted together in a course and another
stone laid over the seam. Who sopped-in
laughter and met pain with breath. And sank under
the ceaselessly breaking wave of event, is
conjugating here. The fragility of presence. A bird
perched at the tip of a branch. Singing, we say.

-- Forrest Gander