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When a writer is frightened by a word
he may have started…
George Oppen
1 In the beginning
the sky
keeps falling urgently
into the dark
arms of the earth. Her touch
is everywhere
flush with the ache
in his skin, infinite,
empty. He clasps
her, yearning: they merge
into one dense horizon.
By night they’re bound
like the seam of an uneasy
eyelid sealed in
sleep.
2 In a furrow
of the dream: the squirm
of the first
cells’ fusion, a flinch
in the streambed
of the ocean. As one, perturbed,
they stir in their sleep—slue
pivot
cant
toward this unknown
north.
3 In the dark
you jerk awake, a word
shuddering in your mouth—you utter
North, and enormity
looms. You echo
what trembles in you, voice
nuance on nuance, scrawl
nearer and nearer its unbearable
core, till
flash! the polestar
constellates space
and the cosmos
gasps open.
4 In the new
World, you say its name
tenderly, tell
its story—word
upon word, impossible,
inexorable,
coming to birth. Thus,
father and mother,
you people the earth.
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