Tag: attention

Joanna Klink from “Sorting & Wonder of Birds”

When I wake up I am responsible
When I wake up alone, I am forced to see

Over the ossified earth the waters are rising
I avert my eyes

Each of us who has a home—
we darken

And the wonder of birds is that they still rise
The wonder of birds

I believe in what is gentle in us, despite what we have done
I believe I can praise everything I am not permitted to become

I believe there is no love in bluntness
but in the struggle toward attention
which is light

Attention is a task we share, you and I. To keep attention strong means to keep it from settling. Partly for this reason I have chosen to talk about two men at once. They keep each other from settling. Moving, and not settling, they are side by side in a conversation and yet no conversation takes place. Face to face yet they do not know one another, did not live in the same era, never spoke the same language. With and against, aligned and adverse, each is placed like a surface on which the other may come into focus. Sometimes you can see a celestial object better by looking at something else, with it, in the sky.

Anne Carson from Economy of the Unlost, viii