The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.
—John Berger, from Ways of Seeing

Grief paralyzes. Motion continues; time departs.
Something’s left with no means to retrieve it.
A candle out in the down–clap of darkness. Then to wade and wade—

In grief: I, detached from place and time.

—

You appear in candlelight across the table.
The oysters gleam in butter. I ask for your hand.
Our fingers hold together for the first time.

—

If we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that hill we can be seen.

—

In a voicemail, you’re walking downhill
to your house, a detail I now know about.

Static crinkles out your breath
to see if I want to talk.

—

I worry that your dream was right.
That I was the abuser, not you. How do I know?

—

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.

—

There’s a way, in your dream,
that you’re able to love me.

The you I love inside the dream
who asks how we can remember.

I want your dream to be right.

—

Now somewhere else, when I read your words,
I get back into the habit of undoing my own.

—

I said yes to your dream so many times
I saw myself as you dreamed me.

—

If we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past.

—

How do I know?
I don’t.

—

Once you leave someone, the dream becomes divided.
Your sense of reality. Their sense of reality.

—

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent.

—

The divided field is a field that cannot be seen
through the eyes of one person. That is,
a field with space for your absence.

—

In my dreams, you remain as vivid as ever,
but you no longer have control over me.

—

A dream is in and out of focus; it is both to aspire
and to touch in spirit—reverie. It is the act of giving
away control of consciousness, to see and be seen
but out of focus. A dream is, in both cases, a vision.

The dream reminds me: what I see and what I know
is never settled. The dream is, also, neither the future
nor the past but a perception of the world through me,
both voluntary and not.

But to hear correctly is my concern. I have no other.
So what is written follows, gets lost, finds the path
again—and what is seen there: that is all included.

NOTES: Italicized quotes are from Ways of Seeing by John Berger. The quote in the last section is from an essay by Marina Tsvetaeva, translated by Angela Livingstone.

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