Word count: 390
Paragraphs: 28
S T E R I L E E A R T H
earth inhospitable
one day, after so many years of not waiting
like a divine promulgation a cloud
too heavy to pass breaks: it’s the flood
I n t h e h u m i d m u d
as some billion years ago
i n t h i s f i r s t g a r d e n
protozoans leave their shells
insects their cocoons and chrysalises
seeds swell up until
sleep breaks
i n a c r a ck i n g o f c l a y
the timid soul of a green shoot
s a l u t e s t h e l i g h t
how the hills are encircled with joy
and the flowers
w h a t t e m e r i t y
what self-confidence in life
what scorn for all that isn’t
the intimate flesh of movement
kissing the rigor of the earth
he who hasn’t met you
will he know to hear
the clarity that sometimes vibrates
between words --
H A M S I N
transparent hell of Arabah
we’ve been walking forever
in the vitreous flaming body of God
columns of sand and sheaves of the wind
strides in the sphere of the poor
we’ve been walking forever
in a grainy wall of granite
in the whistling of the fire that rises
from the earth damasked in the pink of the lungs
we’ve been walking forever
o n t h e d r e a m i n g w a t e r s o f t h e w o r l d
Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Her many areas of interest in 20th-century avant-garde literature and art include Surrealism, poets René Char and André Breton, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group, and artists Robert Motherwell, Joseph Cornell, and Pablo Picasso. Conceptually, one of her primary themes has been the relationship between image and text.