The word was born
\nin the blood,
\nit grew in the dark body, pulsing,
\nand took flight with the lips and mouth.<\/p>\n
Farther away and nearer,
\nstill, still it came
\nfrom dead fathers and from wandering races,
\nfrom territories that had become stone,
\nthat had tired of their poor tribes,
\nbecause when grief set out on the road
\nthe people went and arrived
\nand united new land and water
\nto sow their word once again.
\nAnd that’s why the inheritance is this:
\nthis is the air that connects us
\nwith the buried man and with the dawn
\nof new beings that haven’t yet arisen.<\/p>\n
Still the atmosphere trembles
\nwith the first word
\nproduced
\nwith panic and groaning.
\nIt emerged
\nfrom the darkness
\nand even now there is no thunder
\nthat thunders with the iron sound
\nof that word,
\nthe first
\nword uttered:
\nperhaps it was just a whisper, a raindrop,
\nbut its cascade still falls and falls.<\/p>\n
Later on, meaning fills the word.
\nIt stayed pregnant and was filled with lives,
\neverything was births and sounds:
\naffirmation, clarity, strength,
\nnegation, destruction, death:
\nthe name took on all the powers
\nand combined existence with essence
\nin its electric beauty.<\/p>\n
Human word, syllable, flank
\nof long light and hard silver,
\nhereditary goblet that receives
\nthe communications of the blood:
\nit is here that silence was formed by
\nthe whole of the human word
\nand not to speak is to die among beings:
\nlanguage extends out to the hair,
\nthe mouth speaks without moving the lips:
\nsuddenly the eyes are words.<\/p>\n
I take the word and move
\nthrough it, as if it were
\nonly a human form,
\nits lines delight me and I sail
\nin each resonance of language:
\nI utter and I am
\nand across the boundary of words,
\nwithout speaking, I approach silence.<\/p>\n
I drink to the word, raising
\na word or crystalline cup,
\nin it I drink
\nthe wine of language
\nor unfathomable water,
\nmaternal source of all words,
\nand cup and water and wine
\ngive rise to my song
\nbecause the name is origin
\nand green life: it is blood,
\nthe blood that expresses its substance,
\nand thus its unrolling is prepared:
\nwords give crystal to the crystal,
\nblood to the blood,
\nand give life to life.
\n_______________________________<\/p>\n
From: \u2018<\/em>Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon.’ Translated by Stephen Mitchell.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The word was born
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\nit grew in the dark body, pulsing,
\nand took flight with the lips and mouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}