Thank you for that. Very true, and all we can do is carry on walking.
John G
> On 04 April 2020 at 19:36 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this one some time ago, but it seems rather fitting these days…
>
> Doug
>
>
> September 1961 - by Denise Levertov
>
> This is the year the old ones,
> the old great ones
> leave us alone on the road.
>
> The road leads to the sea.
> We have the words in our pockets,
> obscure directions. The old ones
>
> have taken away the light of their presence,
> we see it moving away over a hill
> off to one side.
>
> They are not dying,
> they are withdrawn
> into a painful privacy
>
> learning to live without words.
> E. P. "It looks like dying"-Williams: "I can't
> describe to you what has been
>
> happening to me"-
> H. D. "unable to speak."
> The darkness
>
> twists itself in the wind, the stars
> are small, the horizon
> ringed with confused urban light-haze.
>
> They have told us
> the road leads to the sea,
> and given
>
> the language into our hands.
> We hear
> our footsteps each time a truck
>
> has dazzled past us and gone
> leaving us new silence.
> One can't reach
>
> the sea on this endless
> road to the sea unless
> one turns aside at the end, it seems,
>
> follows
> the owl that silently glides above it
> aslant, back and forth,
>
> and away into deep woods.
>
> But for us the road
> unfurls itself, we count the
> words in our pockets, we wonder
>
> how it will be without them, we don't
> stop walking, we know
> there is far to go, sometimes
>
> we think the night wind carries
> a smell of the sea…
>
>
>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> Listen. If (UofAPress):
>
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch
>
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