Words for the Chisel (collection)/Long Dialogue

by Genevieve Taggard

Long Dialogue

One Voice

Endure the dark,I have turnedYou out on chaos. . . .My need is deepTo open to such corners on the earth.What is it then you envy so?You who are nothingWho might suddenly startUp from my torpor, up from sleep.

Enter not now, through me, into agony: the narrow groove of birth.Endure the dark.I have turnedYou out on chaos.Enter not now, through me.Endure whereYou are in darkness howling with the wind.And I with you, I limited, you blind.

Elemental, pure,EndureDarkness and the terrible lust of speed.I moveOn a firm planet, still, in me, the stream,The precipice of space, the earth's groove. . . .

Endure the dark.Strangely, I endure The nothingness of you—yourUnbodied being. This insistent painIs mortal illness, being neither inThe glut of life or death, caught in meshes, givenSpace still to turnAbout a nothingness that in its timeWill have its atoms and its tiny suns.