1005. Italy to Lord - Jane Draycott

(From:  The Occupant)

It’s dark in here and forest green: Britannica,
sixteen oak trees in a London living room,

the little girl, my mother, in the bookcase glass.

Italy, Ithaca, Izmail, Japan, each page a mainsail,

turning, HMS Discovery – none of the rivers
of southern Italy is of any great importance.

Like birds on a long-haul flight, let not seas

or deserts, cliffs or icy mountain-tops

impede you. Jews, Kabȋr, Kabul, Kaffir,

from up here all seems clear (all evil in the world’s
ascribed to Maya or illusion), then home at last

returned from all those navigable miles

to Lichen, Linnet, Logic, London, to find

a century has passed, the forest’s cleared,

the animals all bared and scorched, the gold

all brought to light. I look into the glass,

discover there myself in dense shade, deep

and shadowy as on any wooded island.

1004. Labyrinth - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

There’ll never be a door. You are inside

and the fortress contains the universe

and has no other side nor any back

nor any outer wall nor secret core.

Do not expect the rigor of your path,

which stubbornly splits into another one,

which stubbornly splits into another one,

to have an end. Your fate is ironclad

like your judge. Do not expect the charge

of the bull that is a man and whose strange

plural form fills the thicket of endless

interwoven stone with your own horror.

It does not exist. Expect nothing. Not

even the beast obscured by the black dusk.

1003. The Lake of Memories - Robert Altmann

.

Voices sit

like broken chairs

in a room.

A room stands

for the ceremony

of impermanence.

Impermanence cracks

the façade

of self.

The self builds

its walls

of healing.

Healing frames

the house

of wounds.

Wounds bridge

darkness and light

over time.

Time winds through

the lake of memories

in frozen tongue.