Tuesday, January 5, 2010

"What is the Correct Subject"

Love is too indulgent and death is too sad.
It’s time for a new mystery.

Rabbits! Blood!
Animals dabbed on the cave wall!

We can rely on the painted rabbit to teach us about the real rabbit.

And yet—
the real rabbit…


*


The moon shines on the gravel road.

Rabbit on the road, rabbit in the sagebrush: more than one rabbit?

Moon, never the same light from night to night: more than one moon?


More than one moon-experience?

Which is the correct one?


Moon, rabbit: You don’t seem to change each other but, then again…


In Japan they tell a story of the rabbit whose job it is to clean the moon. His reason for doing so is obscure.


There exists a netsuke carving of a moon that, upside-down, becomes a rabbit that, upside-down, becomes a moon…


The guardians understand even more than this.

--Sarah Manguso

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