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David Rothenberg
Do We Travel to See Them?
You can see nothing
so
mist is a clarifier
you enter it-
it moves,
you think at first you can only
see fragments of the view
but later realize
it is clearer, as
you think,
imagine, or choose the
means of forecasting sunsets;
laying them across the past
choosing scale and center
path or course
mist explains
by wishing you to silence
in what is not seen;
if it rains enough
water enters you too
and you can choose
between
chilling corruption
of the skin
or
the embrace of offering
lines and streams
to soak all your fine intentions
and details
in a gray-blue surge
as the tinted glacierlight
only hints under
melting spring drifts,
look-
but in clarity, when the
summersun comes which
would linger forever
you will have no place here,
so climb-
ensure the mist
understands,
as you stand under,
feeling the outlines fall.
The change from
invisible to visible
among mountains is quick,
though when they do appear,
outlines have changed-
snow has moved
water rushes colder
this, or the reverse-
what is constant of the mountain
still can not be seen.
Invisibility Begins When
Sky and Earth are Indistinguishable
and then words as long
dissolve...
when you did not see then
the reasons for not seeing them
looking at too much
at too little
not listening to the ptarmigan:
imagining they say
"come back / kom hit"
not
"wait a bit / vent litt"
or looking the other direction
messages from the outside
warn of dangers we
could not possibly feel
accidents, or the plans-
explanations of the birds and
the wind,
telling why they speak,
without listening to think:
remember the way
you came
and what it
required
and where lines
were to be drawn
between you and mountain;
between
the need to escape
and the pallid kiss of wind
from behind
the tracks which sink
or hold warning
whole arcs of snow sink
and you with them
to a hole within
the mountain
then;
could you see it
then?
There are Many Ways
the Skies Can Make
the mountains invisible
filling themselves
with cloud, keeping
the sun to themselves:
but only a ribbon of rays
would mask darkness,
luminate the nowwhite valleys.
Who chooses, then, when
the ridges become fast black lines
instead of invisible dances?
visibility as apparition,
movement through words,
then
sun so intense visibility becomes
the sun and one dreams
of an endless light
when day undawns, as
white can be warm or cold-
who decides?
you freeze upon contract
yet are warm within it
while its sight can burn you
the emerging passages of earth and
grass-at once
familiar, welcome solid, but
not among the patterns of the
white lines...
again, last, unspoken signs,
the impronounceability
of the ptarmigan:
p..... t......
The Moon of the Mountains
is Another Moon
not more predicted
the strongest object
orange, perhaps-
above the darkblue and forward massif
think of the sounds to go with it
a round statement, orange
standing out from the blue gray
field of harmonic indifference
pure roundness-
slowly rising-
to the higher tones,
the strata shadows keep us
in mind, where the root was
the endlessly rising sound
alone-
would there were more:
a polyphony of moons?
there are if you know
the changes,
mountains moontanned after hours
of night white light.
The Positions of Clouds to
Mountains are Many
they can mirror
their forms through
imagination, they
can appear in the distance as
greater heights catching the
last breaths of sun;
they can deny the solidity of summits
by appearing so
malleable by comparison.
Through mist their immediate
presence can obscure
the immanence of rock and show
a path to vision through
the tunnel of wind.
Note especially the
otherworldliness,
the smooth elongation of
clouds lenticulated
over mountain gaps;
these are themselves mountains
of the cloud domain,
distinct and unexplainable
but never a similar immobility
through cloud equivalence,
still a world rushing water,
particles in air they seem as from another,
seen
from below
in the regions where earth
and air meet in windcurrents
unseen but long-
sharing in their songs.
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