
the silence came close is wise, tender, tentative, bold and bewitching.
hardie's observances resonate with perfect pitch. this is a deeply spiritual book; a religious book, although i am not sure how. we are met with mountainous landscapes, circling crows, the politics of eastern europe, women swigging beer and eating peppers, reminiscences of death, struggle and sensuousness, figures withdrawing from the world and themselves, a burning yearning for living, confessions of guilt, emaciated bodies growning with sickness and growing in insight, celebrations of small details, careful attentiveness to the stuff of life and being.
most people don't buy poetry often. but for the price of a cinema ticket and a box of popcorn you might stumble into something wise and wonderful.
Jacob and the Angel, Wrestling.
This morning I read about Jacob wrestling the angel.
And of his dream.
About the ladder reaching to heaven,
threaded with angels, ascending, descending.
This life, here on earth. Who has not wrestled an angel?
All night, till the breaking of day.
Blind. Pressed close as lovers.
Consumed in the fetid sweat of the flesh,
the terrible reek of power from an angel.
Thy name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel.
Rising up, weak and spent in the morning,
a strange name branded onto the brow,
a nameless horror still clinging.