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I'm Just An Animal Looking For A Home
SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension—though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal—then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little.
DENISE LEVERTOV
--
Notes:
-Gateway to Heaven quote: https://solitudes.qmul.ac.uk/podcasts/
-Other audio quotes from Richard Holloway's Stories We Tell Ourselves
-Kafka's Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings (PDF): https://bookos-z1.org/book/960274/09138f
-José Ortega y Gasset quote from: “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture, trans. Willard R. Trask (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 178.
-Second reading of the poem: https://vimeo.com/269056790
-"This Must Be The Place" covers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCxrEUEO43M&ab_channel=HaleyBlais
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nahv3rqguDs&ab_channel=BartonStrings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsgMqgi2pg&ab_channel=SureSure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7s38Lwk7T4&ab_channel=Myndset
View all episodes
By Steve TellSOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension—though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal—then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little.
DENISE LEVERTOV
--
Notes:
-Gateway to Heaven quote: https://solitudes.qmul.ac.uk/podcasts/
-Other audio quotes from Richard Holloway's Stories We Tell Ourselves
-Kafka's Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings (PDF): https://bookos-z1.org/book/960274/09138f
-José Ortega y Gasset quote from: “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture, trans. Willard R. Trask (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 178.
-Second reading of the poem: https://vimeo.com/269056790
-"This Must Be The Place" covers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCxrEUEO43M&ab_channel=HaleyBlais
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nahv3rqguDs&ab_channel=BartonStrings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsgMqgi2pg&ab_channel=SureSure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7s38Lwk7T4&ab_channel=Myndset