TIME AND THE HOUR The convulsive incision tore light from matter, image from similitude, black vowels croaked and flew from the four-lettered name of God. In diffuse nebulae, non-luminous metals shined in their planets. The thirty intentions of the shadows condensed below a brightness the multitude of species emitted, and Ras Algethi glared in Hercules. So the light came to contain numbers and the first was intoxication and Giotto was intoxicated painting Scrovegni, 1306. Out in the fields -- wheat, cockleburs, jimson -- a farmer stood up his hoe and when that hoe was standing on its own shadow, he knew, and he was certain that he knew. Next |
The East Village Poetry Web Forrest Gander |