Étude 116
tell the hours, not by the clock, but
by the breath exchanged, its
anticipations, stops and commas,
every cadence of it, come the night
or the day gone by, the immensity
of a minute held, or press of
hesitations, from rest to rest, the less
of one, and of the other, the o too much,
or the urgency spread out, as if
upon a page, or a bed, the motions of desire
ascribed to the air, the slow intake
and out again, the unstinting ardour
of endless time : the touch
of eternity in the note, so,
the sounds, rounding out
the silence of the signs, the rise
and fall into a rhythm, the rhyme
of a life, every letter of it
to be told : to the last breath
Ray Malone is an Irish writer and artist living in Berlin, Germany, working on a series of projects exploring the lyric potential of minimal forms based on various musical and/or literary modes/models. His work has been published in numerous print/online journals in the US, UK and Ireland.
You can see more of Ray's work in 13.1 and 11.2 and 11.2 and 9.3 and 9.3 and 8.2