With our present tumult and travails in mind, I have remembered a series of poems I wrote in the mid-nineties called “I Hyphen Thou.” I thought they might be relevant then, but they seem even more so now. Below are two short extracts.
The idea of the hyphen is based on a book called “I and Thou” by Martin Buber. He was a theologian and philosopher, though apparently he denied that he belonged in either category. His book is wonderful and vital.
Using its imagery, I propose that, in a lost and frantic world, there is no firm ground left to us anywhere, except the fragile hyphen between I and Thou. In the dangerous blur that time has become, driving us faster and faster, Self and Self-interest have no value and hold no hope. There is only the connecting hyphen and what we make there.
But how to construct, how to re-construct, the hyphen between I and Thou ?
The whole series (in pdf) can be found here : I Hyphen Thou entire
My recitation of the excerpts can be found here (thank you, Oliver) : https://vimeo.com/76307847
Riding the Hyphen
Through the débris we ride our hyphen
our kite in the hurricane
our dry leaf on the last day
Unnameable fragments swirl about our ears
and rage unanswerable
and pain unhealable and unredeemable
Through the débris we ride our hyphen
our kite in the hurricane
our dry leaf on the last day
What would you bid for a berth on the Ark
for a last communion in the whole aching night
where there’s warmth and trust and a roof above your head
as the world of our failure is unmade ?
Unnameable fragments swirl about our ears
and rage unanswerable
and pain unhealable and unredeemable.
Through the débris we ride our hyphen
our kite in the hurricane
our dry leaf on the last day.
The Hyphen as Surf-board
….The Earth is made raw
goaded past endurance
and none bar the surfer
will survive its onslaught
leaping the crazed beast
as it rages and grieves
in some ancient dance
of despairing beauty
for there’s nothing left
to follow now
but the wild wild blue.
I shall learn to land-surf
to keep my feet
all I can claim of the world
is here to feet.
The city heaves and buckles
squealing and trumpeting
gathering pace
it hastens me
it drives me forward
it tunnels me like a curling wave.
Let me not stumble
let me keep my feet
let me ride it through
let my little board
dash me
steadily through.
Rogan Wolf