a morning with czeslaw milosz, or...

On rolling wheat fields, buttery suns, sunburnt left arms...

so, in Native Realm, my beloved Czeslaw Milosz described his experience of living in a non-native land, and living life well and living not in isolation but instead with people, and feeling at ease--and his sudden realization that despite familiarity and even affection for the people and the place, one is, in this situation, irrevocably “other”. 

This spoke to me. He starts with:

"...Those boards and some floors of red, slightly worn-down brick had already prepared me for something. It all began, though, in the attic. There, I discovered an old chest painted green with red flowers and a similarly painted canopy bed, which had served generations of Swiss peasants. I felt a brief pang of regret then that I was dumb.”

---“Dumb” meaning language ability may exist to express words, but in this case the words are mere shells over opaque meaning.  Lexicons mismatched.  He goes on:

“…Because dumbness is not just physical, and the apparent ease of a conversation in French can mask a gaze that is fixed elsewhere. The fragrance of that attic was familiar, as if it came from the corners of my childhood, but the country where I was born was far away and for my companions my behavior was like a jack-in-the-box's, governed by some mysterious mechanism. Even our mutual taste for old furniture, which somehow retained the presence of bygone persons, concealed a fundamental difference in tone. If I wanted to explain what those pieces of furniture meant to me, what figures they brought to mind, I would have to go back, arduously, to the very beginning and entangle myself in dates, histories of institutions, battles, and customs. ..."


it is in us, our pasts, and our places, and though it is an obvious thing, the realization can come bluntly, and thud into an easy relationship in a most frustrating fashion:  suddenly feeling unknown and not only that, but not up for the task of becoming known.  not knowing how to turn the stains inside and of oneself into a clear painting for the people or person you love, with just words. and the nature of foreign does not have to mean from different countries in the literal sense.  "countries" can of course be metaphorical, even for those not inclined toward flight of fancy and whimsical interpretations. 

how important is it, anyway,  to know oneself and one’s people at that level--be they people from one foreign place or another, but with whom one is—both are, probably-- always other.  how important is it to feel known or be known and what’s the difference; do you have to know deeply or historically to be known; how important is it to not be lonely?

the more i consider it the less sensical it is, the more i talk it through, in english or textbook something else, the dumber i become.

the lexicon of an oyster

in this moment i can’t cluster the images of a lifetime

and i’m not even sure it matters, between us,

to convey across this small table

that my treasure

is an oyster knife.

(smooth wood handle stained with blood,

given me once on a beach

and that is the only one now among my many

that i can actually get to work:  with ease 

i can get it to unhinge and release 

the tightest, alivest creamy crisp, the 

memoried flesh from its smooth inside shell)

so dumbly i sip the sea from its cup,

alone, only one

in a party of strange close bodies

and the spirits of the dead.