1
They do not believe in the transmigration of souls.
They say their bodies will move
as leaves through light.

Everything would be perfect if the atoms
were the right shape and did not fall down.


2
They resent being inscribed
as if they could not remember,
but they congratulate us on the wisdom
of using them to mark graves.


3
Sand makes them nervous.


4
They perceive the cosmos as the interior
of a mighty stone.
At night this is perfectly clear.


5
Long ago
they began to give their light
to build what we now call the moon.
It was almost finished.


6
Tradition says they were the paperweights of a lord
whose messages rotted beneath them.
So they think hard.

The old remember being flowers,
but the young ridicule them and remember fire.


7
Some say they were prayers
until they lost confidence;
others, the ashes
of the shrieking cold.


8
This is their heroic myth:
One afternoon the great stone set out.

It is not over.


9
They are unable to perceive moths.


10
They have a dream, but it is taking
all of them all time
to imagine it.


11
It is the same with their dance,
which has gone on since the beginning
without the repetition of a step.


12
They have computed the human life span
to the nearest hundred years.


13
Knowing them to be found of games, I asked
why they did not arrange themselves
according to constellations, but they said

Look.


14
Under water they hear each other
and glow.

15
After a long drought, break one open.
It may be wet from the rain
of the fortieth day, and still springing back
from the terrible pressure of Noah's foot.


16
They are fond of each season in its turn,
regretting only brevity.

They suspect this world was not made for them.


17
No hand is slow enough, really,
to catch a stone:
the long forest burns
and grows and burns before the jostled stone
like roiled water settles clear again
to its root and its prayer and its home.


18
They recognize everything.


19
They suppose that if they could forget enough
they would become stars.


20
One of them is counting the days,
but they go so fast he cannot stop
to tell us how many.


21
Stone (stōn), noun. Originally a verb meaning
to illumine blackness,, later
to hold without touching, or
to be capable of all things. In modern,
and less felicitous, speeches,
Indo-European, for example,
to thicken or compress.
Still later, as we know.


22
Here is another of their stories:
One stone.
Like the others it is characterized
by control of plot and fidelity to the real.


23
The progress of the stone:

Primevally—a sun unto itself.
In the next age—a bend in moonlight.
Failing this—a cauldron of teeth.
Still later, pitted and harried—a dawn of iron.
In time, our time, a recalcitrant image
in a bed away from the dream.


24
They are experimenting with sex
but are still waiting for the first ones to finish.


25
They are attracted by bright lights
(especially white and blue)
at the rate of one inch per millennium.

They have large and obscure purposes
expressed as continental drift.


26
Fossils: monuments
to their tolerance. Eons
upon eons of surrender
bring a flower to bed with stone.

There is another theory: one stone
remembers one thing—
vividly.


27
They have rings
like trees, a kind of consummation,
growing from inside almost as fast
as they are eroded.


28
When it is unbearably clear,
the stones have taken a deep breath.


29
They have much to teach us
of what we should already know.


30
They place a high value on wit
and refuse to believe it is because they are afraid.


31
They think they eat,
but because they have never been hungry
the question is purely academic.


32
They grumble at the consequences
of leaving no stone unturned.


33
They are fond of the phrase after all.


34
They never had much use for birds
even before the crisis.


35
When I describe to them how we see a shooting star,
they say That is how you look to us.

When I tell them how they look to me,
they are elated and describe in turn
something I have never seen and do not understand.


36
Another day dawns and the stones
labor incessantly until they have
filled it with darkness.


37
Some of their favorites: October,
salt, flowers, 10P.M., starfish,
Paul Klee, stories, waiting, the moon.


38
You know that the sky is blue
from the accumulated breath of the stones,
or will, next time you are asked.


39
When they stare at themselves too long
they become diamonds.


40
Sometimes in the intense light
they are seen to quake.
And they say Never mind,
sun, old burrower
into our dreams.


41
They do not understand the difference
between dying and just going away.
When I walk home they weep,
but not for long.


42
They have been called the eyes
of the lost angels,
and it is true they remember
great lights, and a fall,
and that they seem to be waiting
for something to go away.


43
Here is another one of their stories:
One day the great stone went out
and never returned.

They do not understand this one,
and it is therefore of dubious authenticity.


44
They are very clever at imitation.


45
They question the parable of Perseus and Medusa,
saying that mirros, of all things,
would be no help.


46
They cannot tell the living from the dead.
Be careful to clarify your position.


47
The success of unbearable intimacy:
two stones,
the one to the windward finally
the more smooth.


48
I told them my favorite story:
One day.

They liked it except for the
surprise ending.


49
They know the infinitesimal ways
to the center of peach and oyster,
cherry, brain and heart.

50
They are continually astonished
at the thousands of ways we have invented
to say I am dying.

51
They do not mind lying in the sun,
especially when there is no choice.


52
They call themselves the abbreviation
of distance.


53
They have a proverb: Absurdity
is marvelous, but you get hungry an hour later.

I reply But that is what it is for.


54
Knowing and unknowing never love,
but form the maelstrom within the stone.


55
They have something they will say to us,
but they are revising and revising.


56
They think of the whole day
as sunset.


57
Along the margin of the lake,
stones in a simple line, taking account
of the shouts of generations of lilies,
are polishing the desperate poverty of life
into an opulence beyond all conception of light.


58
This whole encyclopedia reminds me of a stone.
It does not remind them of anything.

When they say That reminds me of a stone,
it means they will not
say anything else for a long time.


59
I asked How can we keep you out of the fields?
They said Give us a place of our own.

This was not like them.


60
They are never disappointed
because they expect nothing.


61
It is possible they would die for us
if they could find a reason.


62
They try to forget,
but their sadness for the flowers will be told
again and again,
though it seems I am no longer the one.


63
I say How do you get to the river?
They say It will come.