as if

[yuuago]

Finished reading as if by E D Blodgett... I'm unsure whether to call it one long poem in three sections, or three long poems, or a bunch of untitled poems that all link together. I guess it's all three at once. It might be worth taking a look at if one can get one's hands on it; I found it lovely, though best read in pieces.

Here's one of my favourite parts:



no one is capable
of holding all of what

is past and so we sigh
letting it escape

strange exchange of all
the air that everyone

has breathed with animals
and trees and creatures we

cannot imagine each
taking and giving of air

turning round us in its
invisibility

the gift that all must share
and leading us in that

dance that all perform
making us kin with stars

---

how near then are stars
beside us in the sun

not to be seen but known
as we would know a bird

that we have heard
perched on the topmost branch

in that country where we
have never trod the ground

singing fragments of
the great psalm that he

has heard the hearing of
it enough for him to know

singing it was what he was
and what he was to be