Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface. There are epochs, however, when mankind, not satisfied with the present, yearning like the ploughman for the abyssal strata of time, thirsts for the virgin soil of time. Revolution in art inevitably leads to Classicism, not because David reaped the harvest of Robespierre, but because that is what the earth desires.

– Osip Mandelstam, ‘Word and Culture’

Poetic genius is not verbal talent (verbal talent is neccesary, since it is a question of words, but it often leads one astray): it is the divining of ruins secretly expected, in order that so many immutable things become undone, lose themselves, communicate.

White coral, rigid sketch of my insides,
the click
of each fitting joint,
moon stones, their lightweight toss.

My skull is a bald hill,
a white, white dune.
It is a heaving cellar; a cold, cement house
full of echo and flushed,
blooming nerves.

If you are my friend, stand up before me
and scatter the grace that’s in your eyes

it’s amazing how death
is always around the corner,
or not even so far away
as that, hiding in the little pleasures
that some of us would go
so far as to say
are the only things
keeping us alive

– Jason Schneiderman, Sugar is smoking

Peristalsis of great capitals
How pretty in her tartan scarf
Her ruminative frown
Ambiguity and Reason
Locked in a slow, ferocious tango
Of if not, why not