Resemblance

Paul Hoover

Placing ancient birds

in absent skies,

the midst is

endless. To rise

alone is clear,

the sudden plum

of a mountain,

a reckless cabin

inhabited by ghosts,

its weather rainy

with ash and

bones. Sire of

light. Color and

substance joined like

coasts. In earth’s

black dream, objects

take shape as

mind and scum.

The weight of

water pouring on

your head is

one reminder, but

our habit is

confession and the

dirt of history

even in these

photos by André

Kertesz of people

reading, the true

light of seeing

in the midst

of squalor, on

balconies and roofs,

even a bug

grazing a page

of Voltaire. A

frocked monk is

reading in a

painting on the

shelf, where a

layer of dust

has fallen on

the pears. How

often nothing happens,

how often it

is shared, and

then toward evening

this feeling of

completion. In its

own carnal grammar,

recurrent entries in

the book of

skin. Normal as

form, every button

shines. To be

entered is all,

breathless and sinking

in the sweat

of love found.

The new place’s

old dream darkens

like a world.

This is birth:

the beating and

the drum, eternity

and the parrot,

meaning and the

feeling, chaos and

the boy. Breathless

acts are fragments,

degrees of desire.

None are structure,

all are numb.

The length of

the bridge, its

gesture elegiac, a

string of chinese

lanterns is firm

as direction. We

can still remember

the garden and

its foxes, baby

and its cake.

Are you marked?

A lark in

sauce? There’s warmth

in not needing,

but still you

want with ripe

eyes open. It’s

like the movie

Wind with its

rhetoric of silence,

where a flag

of a man

struggles toward the

door, only to

discover the recent

day is closed.

On a monochrome

screen, he comes

to resemble darkness

and time, a

meaningless object and

its useless sign.