'You point—they say—you lead lost children' - Louis Zukofsky *1
the fragility of the web
infused
penetrates spaces *2
a web
it
was
there strung
and
purled
pearled between limbs
beneath trunks amid
fiddle ferns spun
between brittle sticks
there mute legs
somehow click
tho no ear hears
but
trembles
feels
which are ways
of knowing
but work they
unwinding
beneath faint stray leaves
each strand somehow
sticks
echoes catching where
spider
tufts sough
a
brief
webbed kingdom
such sleights
do filaments trace
alone with the Alone *3
**
Footnotes
*1 Lines from 'Mantis' by Louis Zukofsky
*2 This is a riff on a stanza by William Carlos Williams from 'Spring and All' p32:
The fragility of the flower
unbound
penetrates spaces
*3 Title of a mystical Sufi poem by the great poet Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī. A Sufi mystic, poet, and philosopher born in Murcia, Spain on the 17th of Ramaḍān (26 July 1165 AD) , Ibn Arabi was one of the great mystics of all time. Considered a Saint, his counsel is to wake up as one 'alone with the Alone'.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem