They say a dimple made its way from town to town
across the world it saw
as from behind a jammed window
that won’t open—it passed as light
through small apertures.
But everybody was so busy with themselves
they couldn’t see it.
No one needed saving anymore.
Father, it asked, grant me instead
the company of trees and creatures.
They are so easy to love.
Let me live in peace
with the natural world.
Creation is a meeting point,
without it there is nothing--
For meaning is a quest in time.
So it memorized the path it traveled
to retain a plane of reference.
Scratching away at the paper, it came in from reality.
It crossed the grasslands to draw near,
a dimple meant to be with its non-dimple kind.
On the penciled surface
the trees and creatures learned to listen
like saints do.
Virgin flowers breathed neither at the surface
nor from beneath it.
They drew air from the mass of snow,
gliding through gravel and paved stones
out into the light.
The elements were brought to an amorphous state.
So it began.
One thing absorbed the other.
Only man and woman couldn’t
find their way in:
they’d almost
adjusted to
but did not trust
one another.
Each was a dimple
in a half-casing—a purely inward object?
across the world it saw
as from behind a jammed window
that won’t open—it passed as light
through small apertures.
But everybody was so busy with themselves
they couldn’t see it.
No one needed saving anymore.
Father, it asked, grant me instead
the company of trees and creatures.
They are so easy to love.
Let me live in peace
with the natural world.
Creation is a meeting point,
without it there is nothing--
For meaning is a quest in time.
So it memorized the path it traveled
to retain a plane of reference.
Scratching away at the paper, it came in from reality.
It crossed the grasslands to draw near,
a dimple meant to be with its non-dimple kind.
On the penciled surface
the trees and creatures learned to listen
like saints do.
Virgin flowers breathed neither at the surface
nor from beneath it.
They drew air from the mass of snow,
gliding through gravel and paved stones
out into the light.
The elements were brought to an amorphous state.
So it began.
One thing absorbed the other.
Only man and woman couldn’t
find their way in:
they’d almost
adjusted to
but did not trust
one another.
Each was a dimple
in a half-casing—a purely inward object?
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Daniel Carden Nemo is a writer, poet, and translator. His work has been long-listed for the Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum) and has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, RHINO, Full Stop, Magma Poetry, Sontag Mag, Exchanges, and elsewhere. For more, go to danielnemo.com or subscribe for free to hataaliinotes.substack.com.
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