radiant fracture

Here's a Don McKay poem I heard about twenty years ago, with a line I never forgot (you'll see which.) I recently rediscovered it through the magic of highly networked public data.


Song for the Restless Wind

The wind is struggling in her sleep, comfortless
because she is a giant,

which is not her fault. Whose idea was it
to construct a mind exclusively of shoulders?

In her dream
the car chase always overtakes the plot and wrecks it.

Maybe she will wake up
a Cecropia moth, still struggling

in a kimono of pressed-together dust
bearing the insignia of night.

Or as her own survivor, someone
who felt that huge wrench

clamped to her skull, loosening cutlery and books,
whirling round her,

corps de ballet, then
exit every whichway,

curtain.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

The odd thing is that I seem to have melted together this poem and another poem in my skull's cauldron, both having been read about the same time and with the same person -- a poem about a girl and a split peach and a mountain, if you care to search your mnemoria for it. (I recently found a lost piece of Bach by means of other people's sound memories. It was a lot of fun. They posted pieces of music and I said things like "The bit at 0:08 is close." Hive mind, mon amour.)

{rf}