Meus Grifos

I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air.

If porcelain, then only the kin you won't miss under the shoe of a mover or the tread of a tank; if a chair, then not too comfortable, lest there be regret in getting up and leaving; if clothing, then just so much as can fit in a suitcase, if books, then those which can be carried in the memory, if plans, then those which can be overlooked when the time comes for the next move to another street, continent, historical period or world: who told you that you were permitted to settle in? who told you that this or that would last forever? did no one ever tell you that you will never in the world feel at home in the world?

We love what we have, no matter how little, because if we don't, everything will be gone. If we don't, we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us. What's here is something that we are still building. It's something we cannot yet see, because we are part of it. Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we, we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce wind, the trees that will give shade to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

The days come and go like waves on pebbles. She the sea will not wear the coat made from flame, made from the flag of combustion. She will not dress herself in fire. Nor can she wear the galloping world she dreams of. The days do not touch her, she has the shell of a snail. She cannot see clearly the way her wounds are shaped. She will not dress herself, she will not dream. She cannot see her way clearly over the cold cinders. To sleep she ventures out under a rowboat to a ship at sea. The nights come and go in the waves beneath the ship, she will not wear the canvas sails, she will not dress herself in salt. The nights do not touch the sea. The sea touches night in her rest.

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

Devagar escreva uma primeira letra escreva nas imediações construídas pelos furacões; devagar meça a primeira pássara bisonha que riscar o pano de boca aberto sobre os vendavais; devagar imponha o pulso que melhor souber sangrar sobre a faca das marés; devagar imprima o primeiro olhar sobre o galope molhado dos animais; devagar peça mais e mais e mais

We can set fire to the memory of the house unlearn a language word by word we can forget a city its streets bridges general stores warehouses cranes cable cars and if it has a river we can forget the river even against the stream but we cannot protect with the body another body from aging by throwing ourserlves upon its memory