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OUT OF THE (NOW) THING

in this Gloom,
I am blinded by the Nothing
                                                                     frozen by the Void
everything is absent
even Time

beneath the black tongue of the Dark, not a breath
I hear nothing

my ear in this Void

                                 no angel, no demon
                                                       unrolling 
                      their celestial grammar

I am in the Void of the night

and I see nothing
it is the solid Nothingness

and yet

I feel something

and I'm going to tell you what…

                                                        wait, I'm going to tell you what

it is the immeasurable Absence

I hear its pulse                             it is there… stubborn   frenetic   telluric

it knocks
knocks
knocks
against
some
thing
it is the sound of a bone
yes, yes                it sounds like the sound of a bone being struck in the Invisible

I cannot be certain
the bone too is invisible

I am in the Dark, remember
                                                                                    I am 
in the Dark

but

I can feel that something is moving through this bone
I feel it there, inside, in Me
it is
it is
it is

                                            ah, how to describe it, to say it

it is
                             like
                                   a world locked away

I feel it circulating
there is movement
it slides like sap
like blood in veins
that forces us to lie
and say
that we are no longer living…

I hover here, in the Gloom
I feel

and I wait

then I hear

the muffled song of a black seed refusing the seasons
growing in this invisible marrow

I
I am as if in a silent room
I am plunged into the Night
the room plunged into the Night

my senses perceive only burns and their sounds
             crackling
                          crack ling
                                        c r a c k l i n g

                                        what is this?

what do you want, Gloomer?
speak to me, Dark
O Solid Nothingness

I do not understand
light me with your restrained galaxies

can you birth the all from nothing?
what are you waiting for to do it?
what are you waiting for from me?

       ...

a silence within the black silence

and then

       …

a rumbling answers

sudden burst

and

       …

with one hand I split the empty air
sparks fill the night
like a hammer on an anvil

an uproar

blood
water
stars
dust
fill this mute chamber, at the dawn of this gesture

each spark
    holds a memory
    that bursts from the furnace it had escaped from
            the solid Nothingness,
                this dark fruit,
        this heart whose beating
        cannot be heard
                    except by the vanished mountains

    and the sleeping wolves

and the lovers who are reborn and who have forgotten their own names.

…

                                I see all of this, around me
                                                      the wonder

                                from nothing springs the all
                                in a single gesture, an entire story is told to 
                            the Night


I understand: everything is Now

    in French: Maintenant
    in Latin: manu tenendo

that is to say: while one holds something in the hand

no, no, no…
not two hands

one hand is enough

                      and there, I tell you                              …

what one holds is an entire world
                  the void is a closed fist

        at the heart, in the hollow of its palm lies the Nothingness of everything

                Now!

                not tomorrow,
                      that patient ghost sewing pockets into the wind

                not yesterday either,
                      that drowned cathedral where echoes kneel forever

yes, I understand

Now

in its palm, everything gathers:

                          dancing dust,

                                          diverse moons,

                                                            thousands of faces

I think: Now is the great animal that drinks every river at once

I imagine: Now is the hidden orchard whose apples are suns, whose roots are buried in the lungs of the dead and the laughter of children not yet conceived

I believe: Now is the impossible house built of doors that open only inward, where every room holds the first cry of creation still turning beneath the rafters like white birds refusing to land

and I, who am I… ?

I hover here                              gentle spectator
in this dream that exists

am I alive, dead, everything or nothing?
could I be merely someone?

perhaps I am one of the Children of Now?

one of those beings who steal letters from the mouth of thunder
to rearrange them until the stone begins to sing

I am the one who folds vowels into rivers, sharpens consonants until they become the antlers of stags running through forests of a green so beautiful, so alive, one would think they breathe

I am the creator of a language, the language of Now, gathering the alphabet as one gathers wet branches after the rain
    and this language being born becomes like a patient fire whispering to the ashes how to remember the shape of trees

in the solid Nothingness, a single word becomes a field, every silence between them becomes the loudest bell ever rung by the hand of dawn

and from its words an entire world appears.
and in this world, the world of Now, there is love

                                                                                    love

when I realize this, the Duskening is a little less present, things gravitate around me, in this palm from which so many things escape

                  love

                  love is the migration from distance to presence
the pure presence of Now
this distance is at first a horizon, but suddenly I embrace this horizon until it folds entirely into me, into my depths

I carry this farness the way a shepherd carries the stars one hears in the wind of old songs

and so

I return

I return again

to the Night

I return endlessly to the birthplace of the Impossible, of what seems Impossible to me, this place where absence feeds abundance, where the void grows heavy with invisible fruit, where every farewell is secretly a door still learning to become a place of arrival

here, I can say it since I can see it:

                                      Now is never bare,
                            it clothes itself
                            in rain,
                            in veins,
                            in moss climbing over abandoned walls,
                            in smoke rising from villages forgotten by maps
                            but remembered by crows

Now refuses all explanation
it speaks only through cracked bells, through rivers swallowing moonlight, through the immense patience of roots drinking the dark

                                it says only what survives the fire

it tells me:

                              Become.
                              Burn without consuming yourself.
                              Carry the whole night in a single drop of blood.

and so,
so,

I obey, and discover that order is only chaos learning to breathe


everything moves, in every direction

it is a spectacle

the stars arrange themselves
like seeds thrown by ecstatic hands.

tides appear and keep impossible promises.
suddenly the snow remembers the architecture of vanished clouds

each heartbeat

    beat
    beat

heartbeat
is a parliament of storms

each eye
holds a lighthouse
built from an ancient flash of lightning

                                                                  to know what I am Now
                                                                  is to stand barefoot
                                                                  in the furnace of eternity

                                                                  to know that I am Present
                                                                  is to become the wind
                                                                  that scatters my own ashes
                                                                  before death has gathered them

I no longer live
in the silent library where dust reads to dust,
but in this thunder
hidden beneath every rib of Life.

Now waits there,
a beast made of music,
a cathedral of wolves,
a thousand black horses
galloping beneath the skin,
shaking loose
the silver fruit of speech

it enters our nights
tears open the Darkness
like bread shared among strangers


it pours out galaxies
through the cracked window
of a single dream of a single being

it lights up abandoned rooms
where forgotten ancestors
still braid rivers
into the hair of girls not yet born

finally, then, in this impossible instant
the Universe remembers
its first astonishment

the oceans stop their old quarrel
the mountains breathe in
the moss on the ruined stones begins to glow with intelligence
stars learn humility

from this instant
a thousand others are born,
each carrying a thousand more,
each opening like the rain
in the endless wheat of time,
until the Present
is no longer an instant
but an immeasurable orchard of language
where each fruit contains
another orchard,
where each flame shelters
another darkness,
where each silence
births another choir,
where each human heart
is secretly the forge
and each tear
a luminous hammer,
and each breath
strikes the invisible metal
from which worlds are forever
created,

                                    forever falling back,
                                                      forever returning
        to the solid Nothingness

                  whose empty hands
                                        still cradle

                                              the impossible weight

                          of everything that shines.