Silent Light (with Dorothea Lasky)

-after Carlos Reygadas

To the dear Farmer of Mexico

Dear Farmer, In Mexico,
Did you hear about the plane that crashed into the water?
It happened in a dreary landscape
Not unlike this one
In which I write this poem
Unlike this one
Is the sun rising for an hour
Over rabbits crying and crickets crying
And Mothers crying
In morning dresses so filled with rain
So wet with water
They might as well be dry
And death that comes up
When it has already come
And death
Which rises up
When it has already fallen
And dusk which rises up like dawn
And end which rises up like a beginning
And the beginning which is not unlike the end
The Mother's wetness
Not unlike the tears which made her
Deadly
As a snake in the grass of the field
With those who we love
And the grasses and corn
Dry in the dead fields of those dead who we love
And the living wet with rain in the
Grasses of those dead who we love
And those who we love dead not living
In the grasses dead who we love
And the light of the dawn dead
In the grasses of dead who love
And who we love dead now living
In rooms of grasses who we love
No no, no white rooms
In the boxes of the dead now living
In the light of day that we love
All in all, dear Farmer
It is the light of day that we love
In the field with yellow flowers
You go to meet a snake in the grass
And I watch you
In this neverending landscape of dread
Which is only a beginning
To the day I begin
In the deadly combination
Of love and light
In the deathly combination
Of horrible want
And horrible longing


No light better than this
Silence conquering space-time
The umbilical stars always in
A horizon before our future

Breaks milk is sort of like
Tears sort of similar to sweat
Which is like cum on your
Breasts when you are with

Him not a separate being
This awful apartheid despair
As if Kierkegaard’s problems
Transposed in the landscape

Of Mexico big-sky country
Respiratory open earthly
Where every moment seems
A resurrection of our breath

Heaving in the reflection of
A pendulum what won’t
Leave this room like singularity
No other hope in words

Images but in this the pinkish-
violet petals of our desire
Unawares camera must catch
Them in focus make them real

These powers unsaid between
Us are real resurrecting the
Children believing she’s not
Dead a milk of your eyes years

Sweat come sadness from
Beyond the actual pores the actual
Ducts spoon caught on your
Thumb the earth which is

Breathing the grass seeming
To sigh under the sky your
Chest feels full of lead her
Heart heaves heavy with regret

Time has no other direction
Except when we cry except when
Daughters don’t believe in it
Stars might lead us again.