Kit Kelen #198 - found draft - notes for my Japanese translator

198

found draft

in the notes for my Japanese translator, Hiroko Izumi

I imagine a scrap of writing turns into a leaf from a tree

the wind is what conceals the change

it is the agent of change as well

the wind is the change

and the leaf

and what's written

passes here means

can be taken for

as in knowing what's what

a demonstration of gratitude

on old television sets – when the image wouldn't settle

but kept turning over and over, vertically

like closing curtains

as if the beggars were part of the wall, came out of the wall,

just a hand out of the wall, as if the wall were begging

the glass is stuck in one's head after having a drink –- but it's not my head, it's someone else's

it's as if my father (dead thirteen years now) were in some institution (hospital, army, school)

– and I wonder what the food is like there

and there isn't any

in other words, will the light be found?

the future is full of stars that have died, as for instance, ours

one cannot tell whether the joy is of the words or of the world or both

home is home!

love rests on a gate …

as it swings

or leaning on the gate to have a rest …

what's beyond the top of the hill or in the next valley

low noise of something hitting something else

in this case probably the wallaby's tail

footfall is the sound of the foot touching the ground

I've taken that apart

while I make a note on paper

there was a frog in the letterbox years ago

there is still a frog in the letterbox

I imagine that it is the same frog

it looks the same

though this is unlikely given what is known of the lifespan of frogs

the little dreaming patch is the place in the country where we live

striving – in a rough kind of way

and having the advantage of a good sleep

simply – what the singing tells is the most meaningful thing

the meaning comes to us without any words

but it does have feathers and fine bones

you know there's a surface because something is scratched on it

places in the garden where there is nothing that needs to be done

in the Wizard of Oz the scarecrow sli ps of the nail

that was holding him onto a post

in order to go on his adventures with Dorothy

a flokati is a big woolly rug of Greek origin

a machete could be something like a ukulele, but it's NOT, it's a bladed tool for cutting grass or weeds or jungle... very useful in the garden but no one wants you to get on a plane with one these days

it's addressed to the ancient Egyptian sungod

the Koolonock is the low range of hills across the Myall River

on the other side of the valley from where my place is

I should salute this particular sun, as if each sun seen were a different one, a new one

the sun is new every day

in order to salute you need to use a part of your body – for instance your arm

it's the bright sunshine that makes my shadow

at this point in the poem we don't know what the it is

but it turns out to be the rain

the sound of the rain on the roof is like a kind of speech

when the sky is in the right mood

it's as if the mist around them were an aura created by the process of observing

as if the mist were not really here

but were spoken from somewhere else

the way a ventriloquist throws his/her voice

to make it appear that someone else is speaking

the mist is like a hat for the whole world

- it covers everything

blurs every line but if you look hard maybe you can still find the lines

you can't see where the sun is

but the sun is drawing the lines

the image is of things flowing and floating

birds over the land and the sound of cattle

I am trying to suggest these animals

without saying their names

throated else means making another call

seasons well up - like water overflowing

- the season is too full

stars cannot speak, cannot tell their story

the smallest things in life – e.g. insects, worms – have their own tunes …

you can imagine these written down as music

the words are like smoke – you can't catch them

each time I paint a paintin g

wherever I cut the grass or the weeds – with scythe

it's as if I were making crop circles by myself

I have made a noun into a verb here

to say what palms do

they put out fronds – so why not

palms frond (?)

what belongs in love or any clinch

you never know which way a tune will go – it's like a track

you're walking for the first time

the best thing is not to trim it

but let everything grow

and grow in

like a garden gone wild

so that you're somehow trapped in it

but in a good way

I make food

I share it

I make friends

the question is who is the we?

the noun wings and the verb burrow

suggest maybe birds and maybe a mammal like a wombat or a rabbit

the point is that our species has all of these kinds of history – and so affinity

all of the hours that make up the future

i.e. all of the time that there is from now on

we know (or astronomers know)

which star a star is

by knowing the way it will go