‘AND INTO / WHAT DO YOU STUMBLE / BUT THIS VIOLET / EXTINCTION?’
The following is a poem from Be With, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. * The Sounding What closes and then luminous? What opens and then dark? And into what do you stumble but this violet extinction? With froth on your lips. 8:16 a.m. The morning’s sleepy face rolls its million eyes. Migrating flocks of your likesame species incandesce into transparency. A birdwatcher lifts her binoculars. The con- tinuous with or without your words situates you here (here (here)) even while you knuckle your eyes in disbelief. Those voices you love (human and not), can you hear their echoes hissing away like fiery scale from an ingot hammered on some blacksmith’s anvil? And behind those voices, what is that blowing the valves of your ears open as black rain, not in torrents, but ceaselessly comes unchecked out of everywhere with nothing to slacken it.__________________________________
From Be With. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing. Copyright © 2018 by Forrest Gander.
