Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Rivers


The Heraclitians claim
that you don’t step into the same river twice
while all rivers are the same
in the Platonist’s eyes

Let us take a case:
the river of my skin
- a time lapse camera would show
From the body within

the belly of my mother
to the belly of my tomb
the skin flowing like a river
in which I swim.

The flakes, hairs, pores, moles, scratches
acne, scars, rashes, tags
are carried along in snatches
- they appear, they flow, they lag

and it all gathers in wrinkles in the end.
- I said swim? We are drowning in this river
and at every elbow bend
the river is drowning in us.

Being and becoming, the luck of the drowned
by and  by we’ll moulder in the cold, cold ground.

- Karen Chamisso

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