#unimage

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HANDS LIKE HOUSES

[hypocrite-lecteur]

"To see clear, resist the drag of images. Take nature as it is, not Dame nor Kind. Act in events; touch what you name. Abhor easy obverts of natural metaphor. Let human speech breathe out its best poor bridges from mind to world, mind to self, mind to mind.

Yet, I admit the event of the wood thrush:     In a footnote Langer (her book rapids-clean     like the spring-water aired over sleek rock)     says she witnessed an August bird in shock     when a hawk snatched its mate. It perched, rushed     notes fluting two life-quotas in one flood,     its lungs pushing its voice, flushing the keen     calls, pumped out as the heart pumps blood,     not in twilight or warning but noon & wrong,     its old notes whistled too fast but accurate.

I read this drenched in bird-panic, its spine- fusing loss all song, all loss; that loss mine awash in unanswered unanswered song. And I cannot claim we are not desolate."

Marie Ponsot, from "Pathetic Fallacies Are Bad Science But (On reading Susan K. Langer's Mind)"