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3
ORDS ARE NOT LIFELESS ROCK or gnawed
and wind-whitened bones up in the mountains.
Even the most mundane of them can grow
distant over time and transform into museums that house
the past, what is gone and will never return. Meadows,
manured hayfields, we’re moved to tears by these words,
something snaps within us, as when we unexpectedly come
across old photos and see faces long since lost in the earth,
or the sea. Where are the meadows?, and we recall tranquil
summer mornings, so still and deep that we could nearly
hear God, but we also recall the toil, the wet feet, the wet
grass, newly mown, how tremendously we recall the
fatigue, we recall what’s gone and will never return, recall
so poignantly that we were once alive, that we could once
hold hands, that there were once childish questions. Once
we were alive, once had names and they were sometimes
spoken in such a way that the deserts of life began to
flourish with green. Once we were alive, but not any longer,
what surrounds us is called death. Where are the meadows?
•
IS YOUR HEART STILL BEATING?
And how does it beat?
W