—Heraclitus (translated by Brooks Haxton)
This stone is older than its human shape, having
had no say in becoming this. Sea wind
forgives its form, while spur-winged plovers
click out their Morse code music
as if they had something to tell us we need
to know about shadows the light makes
of these ruins. History has never had
anything to do with aesthetics. Memory
has it over any text. The faintest shade,
mute with the loss of flesh, has more
to say about what happened than
any figure carved in stone. Trouble is,
without a body there is no voice,
& it is voice that embodies what
we remember. Though we may depart
as air, it is the sound of a voice breathing
that air in & speaking that’s remembered.
Breath allows for voice, & yet this
conversation, Heraclitus, which changes,
like everything does, has to occur within
texts. Yours, fragmentary yet insistent, & mine,
this rusty attempt at creating the illusion
of air & breath where there’s only ink.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 3.
George Looney’s books include the recently-released Ode to the Earth in Translation, The Worst May Be Over, which won the Elixir Press Fiction Award, The Itinerate Circus: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020, the Red Mountain Press Poetry Award-winning What Light Becomes: The Turner Variations, and the novel Report from a Place of Burning which was co-winner of The Leapfrog Press Fiction Award. He is the founder of the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Penn State Erie, editor-in-chief of the international literary journal Lake Effect, translation editor of Mid-American Review, and co-founder of the original Chautauqua Writers’ Festival.
See all items about George Looney
