by Odilon Redon
Two for Tuesday:
Grace
Living is dailiness, a simple bread
that’s worth the eating. But I have known a wine,
a drunkenness that can’t be spoken or sung
without betraying it. Far past Yours or Mine,
even past Ours, it has nothing at all to say;
it slants a sudden laser through common day.
It seems to have nothing to do with things at all,
requires another element or dimension.
Not contemplation brings it; it merely happens,
past expectation and beyond intention;
takes over the depth of flesh, the inward eye,
is there, then vanishes. Does not live or die,
because it occurs beyond the here and now,
positives, negatives, what we hope and are.
Not even being in love, or making love,
brings it. It plunges a sword from a dark star.
Maybe there was once a word for it. Call it grace.
I have seen it, once or twice, through a human face.
~ Judith Wright
Space Between
Space between lip and lip
and space between
living and long-dead flesh
can sometimes seem the same.
We strive across, we strain
to those who breathe the air,
to those in memory;
but Here is never There.
What is the space between,
enclosing us in one
united person, yet
dividing each alone?
Frail bridges cross from eye
to eye, from flesh to flesh,
from word to word; the net
is gapped at every mesh,
and this each human knows:
however close our touch
or intimate our speech,
silences, spaces reach
most deep, and will not close.
~ Judith Wright
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 