merging.

another response to surface delights.

Yannis Ritsos: The Meaning of Simplicity (p.92-93, poems for the millenium)

I hide behind simple things that you may find me;
if you don't find me, you'll find the things,
you'll touch what my hand touches,
the imprints of our hands will merge.

The August moon glitters in the kitchen
like a pewter pot (it becomes like this because of what I tell you)
it lights up the empty house and the kneeling silence of the house-
always the silence remains kneeling.

Every word is a way out
for an encounter often canceled,
and it's then a word is true, when it insists on the encounter.

I really enjoy this poem. It makes me wish I knew Greek like I do French so I could go to the original text and experience it as it was created. The idea of a surface being able to carry the touch from one person to another is fascinating. I am currently seated in an old chair my roommate bought at a garage sale. The bottom is stamped Jan 15, 1959. I am unaware of the number of individuals who have seated themselves on the very vinyl I am now touching. But I touch what they touched. The imprints of our bodies have merged. I wonder, who I sit with, whose imprints mine have merged with.