We know only what the music knows | I want to | say | But that kind of saying is over | for the time being | Maybe it will be back one day? | And the winter isn’t perpetual | the ruins are ruins for a while, for sure | but then soon are re-developed | or covered by forest and then | re-developed | there’s business to be done here | salt and cashmere to be traded | lambs | derivatives | Ruins are in the structure | the gamble of stand and fall | part of the music’s charm | as fatigue belongs to the metal | the plane’s wings preparing | to fold | the plane | to sleep in a bright | re-direction of atoms | a new swirl | a river’s re-flow | This, we tell ourselves, we know | or we used to tell ourselves | We used to say: We only know what the music knows | and we would say that | while listening to music, or dancing | very slowly to music | in a half-lit room | when the destination of our journey | was like a bud | opening on a branch | And in our love | there was business done | lambs traded | cashews, salt | and slaves and guns | it was | how the edge | belonged to the core | As we stopped dancing | we tried to remember | how the music had been | but, well, we’re flawed | and we couldn’t get it exactly | and besides, the ruins were already | walking in | asking us to go | We had no choice | And if the silence came then, would we know only | what the silence knows?

 

from the series fleeting pixel (series of 1,000 poems, 2012–2016)
(this poem, September 2016)