REDISCOVERED MEMORYRediscovered memory
Back wheat and right feet marking the revolutions of the traffic the father holding his baby in the shade of the cheap apartment the subdued anger in the intersection naked heat I vow to make We're working on the channel scraping away at the rock just a little rutway a rutland to speed up the delivery of the net the wires and the streams in silver the waters of the night at surface milky and clean the world outside of the world next to the world the world before the world after the world the world inside of the world talking to the neighbors: I am practicing my voice, on how to get along the near being hide and hook and hark and hayfield troubadour dominion I hear there have been seen birds in the air they nest in the trees they are hanging many wires here the mountains: how long have they been here? have you seen them being built? is your mother well? sometimes I have heard her songs like riddles the color of the street I fear there may be a region of space closing in like a fire hydrant lurks by the door demanding entrance with its terrible waters in my opinion we should be wary of the language that is used to describe appositions the naked man emerging at inappropriate times cloaked in the ordinary things erected along this road tell me, will the year be good? and are the waters arriving again? I have seen it in my sleep. Do you know what color it is? Perhaps that is what I will paint my door The children are afraid. But still they are laughing. So it cannot be so bad. They look at me without the government insignia I think they recognize the sound Don't mind me, I am a singer in small compartments They sell them at the bodega Cheap tracks for long journeys Two bits The Airship . . . well, but I am talking your ear off. Be well, be well. We are still here. In unseen dimensions My role is hardly record keeper I don't know how to count. Not able to count men or women Not able to count the doorways or clouds I cannot even count children More than three and I lose track. I am not able to inform officials of duties Or reasons Nor am I certified to be made indignant by philosophies Since I cannot understand them Perhaps I am a cleaner with a peculiar passion for dirt moving it into shapes and not throwing it out Like the mediation of pine needles over concrete blowing across the threshold of our cheap apartments It may be I am a newsman But I have not sold many papers It is not that my articles are so outlandish Or my headlines so quotidian Likely you will know better than I what the problem is "Mother Still Knows What She is About" and "Water is Likely to Form" and even "God may have an appendix" have been some of my headlines I do not know the future and so cannot be a prophet I have no idea what is coming I could be a painter but I do not have any paint Nor any canvas Nor any brushes I do have a pencil and some old lined paper But I have not been using them much No, I vow to make this channel I am a digger And so I must apologize in the way of diggers Informing you that it is going to be coming beneath you Informing you that you may need to move your vehicle Erecting barriers and new entrances Covering our temporary pits Moving the earth Out of where it sits And putting it somewhere else nearby So that we can put in the way The way from here to there another place like here but further down just a little way out where there are other people further away and just a little different sometimes they are interested in talking with us they have some things that need to be said or that they just want to say about what they have been finding out or ignoring just have a chat I am digging into the ground here is where I am starting the sound of the dirt the sound of the metal the depth of the hole six inches and then ten a dozen inches three feet in half the length of a tall man enough to see the color of the earth a little further from the sky a little dirtier the smells rising from the unrooted greenery the chapter heading the capital in nouminescent fragrance the region of the air over the town the region of space inside your head the nightmare of the city the colors of dreams each one significant the apartments inside the city of dreams urgent and undying inhabited by people from far away so like us and so far away I am digging a channel through the city Please get out of the way we are communicating with intelligences that may be important yes, men at work men at work the sky is a city outside just like dreams are underground. the children have been discovering this Can I make it a headline? Where is the channel going? What kind of city is it we are building? Why are the children afraid? Tell me, I demand to know What is it you have been doing. Why was it I was made the digger? Shouldn't you have done this already? No, it is all right. It needed to be done sometime. So now I am doing it. The color of the sky The inhabitations of man Over his face You understand I am sure what I do not mean What I cannot say What are the figures who hover over the land Over the mind Shaking their lances Like memories Like false ancestors Or true ancestors The word of the master and the words of slaves The rectangles you have put into the buildings The scars you have put on your body it is not that I am demanding things I have no force of any kind I have no weapons I have no authority I am not even your friend Hardly even your neighbor Near being, near being (that is what neighbor means) Nigh being, Nigh being My brothers And sisters Perhaps I am a priest That is what it is A mad priest One of the elders Permitted to wander insane and mutter things into the air Fed like a beggar with my bowl But I have no religion And too many gods They are not concerned with me. Here, help me to dig. We are getting closer to what it is I am looking for. Just digging out a road, you see To encourage commerce To say that it is all right to visit To say that we are here And to say that we have not always been here And to say that we are not sure actually how long we have been here, and not been here And to say that we are curious about how it is has been for you Are things okay? Is the weather treating you all right? Do ships appear in the sky at indifferent intervals? And how does it feel? And does my mother still remember my name? What is it that has come over my mother? And why has it come over all of you? Is it that you want me to die? I am unneeded and unwanted? Please tell me, I need to know if that is the case. Let me know that you have decided. It is all right, people are permitted to decide such things. No, it is not that, I'm sure. But it is like that. Perhaps you do not like the holes I have been digging, is that it? You no longer favor commerce? Towns die without it, you know. We have to have roads to come in And roads to go out Surely you know that much All the glory of the roads, you remember them And the pictures they tell Am I permitted to sketch the picture of a road? It is not forbidden yet I know, so here it is It stands five feet underground But running for quite some distance Perhaps a hundred miles Heading north To another city Another people Much like our own But dwelling on the north side Its color is black like ink stretched out against the brown land stretched out against the grey mountains it is beautiful at night and in the day drenched in heat like your face we are erecting channels underneath it and along it we want to know we want to see what has been happening if we are permitted to look if we are permitted to speak if the sound of the air is like the sound of a child's voice discovering the country and the earth
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