What Comes
by Carolyn Forché
J'ai rapporté du désespoir un panier si ipetit mon amou, qu'on a pu le tresser en osier.
I bought back from despair a basket so light, that it could have been woven of willow.
—Rene Char
This body was a flock of gulls over open sea, its cries those of hunger entering clouds.
There were thoughts of flight through luminous gorse but a chaos of crows darkened.
One discovered within herself the power to free herself. One stepped away from her body but remained.
Years have passed between these moments. There is nothing that cannot be seen from here.
How did you know Solitary, that I who am without clarity was about to speak?
To speak is not yet to have spoken.
The not-yet of a white realm. Of nothing left
-neither for itself nor another-
A no-longer already there, along with the arrival of what has been
-light and the reverse of light-
terror as walking blind along the breaking sea, body in whom I lived
-the not-yet of death itself-
darkening what it briefly illuminates
an unknown place, -as between languages-
-back and forth, behold beheld, breath to breath-
as a calm in the surround rises, fireflies in lindens, an ache of pine
-you have yourself within you-
yourself, you have her, and there is nothing that cannot be seen
open then to the coming of what comes.
Peace, dwight
“What Comes”
