Mountain song
My wafer-thin flanks are ours. Our feet are ubiquitous, day and night we cry. We rustle pure rustle silver and sweet our weeping. That’s the trickle you hear.
Those who perish perish in us. Well-mannered we stand around them in well-cut shrubs and woods. The firebreaks derive from this or silence us open. They are silent in each individual case.
It’s quite a buzz. Those who perish in us perish infallibly.
Ask the skies, the cattle. Where we rustle, ooze, sigh, they ring. My wafer-thin flanks are ours. The firebreaks derive from this. Ask the guards, the sea.
Our feet are everywhere. Our feet are serif letters. They sing softly. Wordlessly still.
Even the unfathomable, the rock solid is ours. Born from motion we freeze. Ice cold. We stand, lie, serve our time. Lean over you, roughly survive.
There are, certainly, those who perish in us, but we are also dance floor, stirrup, there’s liveliness and lots of praying.
The tinkle is additional. Cattle, believers, things like that. We trickle.
~
Forest management
Armstrong, our Benjamin, closes the line. Fingerling and Birdwhistle protect Rustlelove, I cherish my crown as the highest point of the curve.
We sway shoulder to shoulder, speechlessly joining together, embracing the wind, carrying the cloud, which never looks like us. Jackdaws’ meeting punctually in the plush.
Millions of names we sprinkle between our toes, the itch in the earth’s armpit houses their whispers and we whisper along. Toe language. Breath hymn.
The curve that makes us psalm vapor circuit, woolly resilience, we peal like palms.
The saw awaits us.
Armstrong was the first to know. We called the nestlers and rollers. They came in droves, cloudlessly approaching us. Benefit free of charge. What accumulates is the curve, breathes fear, willing will.
Rearguard sent the latest news, we know him, he cannot lie. Chton confirmed it in stone and fire. Ants, she called them, ‘‘they don’t know anything’’. I said that ants know a lot. It was just a metaphor, according to Chton. Armstrong trembled.
We sway speechlessly, shoulders together, embrace the wind, carry the nests, the cloud that does not resemble us. Standing is a breeze.
The saw awaits us.
Rustlelove is doing what he has to do now. Unmistakably abele. In the hope of awakening in resurrection. The heavenly rivulet.
~
from: Songs from the Primeval Forest, 2020
ill. Piet Mondriaan, Bomen aan het Gein, 1907-8
