The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters
\nthese by themselves delight, even without
\na meaning, in a foreign language, in
\nChinese, for instance, or when skaters curve
\nall day across the lake, scoring their white
\nrecords in ice. Being intelligible,
\nthese winding ways with their audacities
\nand delicate hesitations, they become
\nmiraculous, so intimately, out there
\nat the pen’s point or brush’s tip, do world
\nand spirit wed. The small bones of the wrist
\nbalance against great skeletons of stars
\nexactly; the blind bat surveys his way
\nby echo alone. Still, the point of style
\nis character. The universe induces
\na different tremor in every hand, from the
\ncheck-forger’s to that of the Emperor
\nHui Tsung, who called his own calligraphy
\nthe ‘Slender Gold.’ A nervous man
\nwriters nervously of a nervous world, and so on.
\nMiraculous. It is as thought the world
\nwere a great writing. Having said so much,
\nlet us allow there is more to the world
\nthan writing: continental faults are not
\nbare convoluted fissures in the brain.
\nNot only must the skaters soon go home;
\nalso the hard inscription of their skates
\nis scored across the open water, which long
\nremembers nothing, neither wind nor wake.
\n~ Howard Nemerov, from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters these by themselves delight, even without a meaning, in a foreign language, in Chinese, for instance, or when skaters curve all day across the lake, scoring their white records in ice. Being intelligible, these … Continue reading