“The genius of landscape” is like any spirit.
Each time, it has to be introduced to a place
In which it is then said to have always been.
Later, some other tribe or church sweeps in
With their own ideas about spirits and genius
That they install in place of the earlier, although
They remain easily spooked by the idea
That those first angels still haunt their forests.
Eventually, every wave dissipates and is
Forgotten. Think about this, genius, watching
Over a newly fond creek in the mountains.
Likely there were successive spirits believed
To inhabit those tree-choked canyon margins
That were ancestral, antecedent to this current
Configuration of rocks and water racing past rocks
In its constant rush to get down before them.
We have composed so many passages
On and around creeks little different than this one
That we could almost claim to be the spirits
Ourselves, haunting them. Actually, we are, at that.
There never was a spirit in the world that wasn’t
Hatched and transported as words by the species
Obsessed with the repetitive disruption of our gifts.
A shower drifts down the heavy grey atmosphere.
More water, more grist. A few of us intend to spirit
Our ghosts and angels with us, away from this
And every other landscape, however each aided us
With our spiritual conceptions. We have enjoyed
Too much the bliss of hours spent where the previous
Spirits were all forgotten, where the landscape rests
In speechless busyness, without much more than
Scraps of name or coordinates to attest to its special
Blessedness. We will not leave one stone-carved verse.
We will not place tokens in the moss; we will not build
Cairns in the shade. Our sacred groves will remain
Sacred only for their signature spiritual emptiness,
Their nothing they have to say to us, their wordless
Noisiness. Pray the universe ignores us, as we are
Blessed only if the stars continue to refuse to signal
Back to us. We worry about our arrogance. We worry
About our loneliness. Pfff. It would be best for us
If the cosmos turned out, not only to have nothing
To say to us, but nothing to say beyond us, through
Us alone haunting the creek’s rush. Genius.
No comments:
Post a Comment