SMALL BANG Poem by Cees Nooteboom

The poem heard how it was composed,
it saw the giant hand
from which it seemed to have its being, word by word,
it barely could keep up with itself.


Keep up, it saw itself spelled out, and its own echo,
keep up, keep up, but the hand
had run ahead, lashed by the whip
of its own scratchings,
that homesickness for form.


It hurts not to be whole
for someone who arrives out of nowhere.
The words lie breathless on the desk,
the hand disappears, returns, disappears,
the poem remembers nothing.


And the head, so far above,
still unrecognizable,
except as the mask of chaos and beginnings,
turns from its lines,


and listens to its own breathing,
the cadenza of thought
that ends the poem
with a sigh.