The Indescribable

CIRCLES

I live my life in big circles

that surround all things,

that circle around all that is.

Maybe i will not complete the last circle,

But i will attempt it.

I circle around God

that ancient tower,

and I have been circling

for centuries and millennia,

And i do still not know:  am i a falcon, 

a storm, or the Great Song.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

How often we hear, "Just can't put it into words."  A call to action for 
a writer, we discover ways to put ideas into words.

Tomaž Šalamun writes,
"The very fact that we can't describe it now, searching as we are with various metaphors and 
similies, shows us what a powerful thing it is, what attraction it has."

Šalamun feels, "The inexpressible is like the beast in the woods that the hunter always knows
only by its tracks."

I AM A MASON

I am a mason, a priest of dust
foritfied like a monster, a crust of bread
I am a water lily, a soldier of holy trees
holy dreams, with the angels I shout

I am a castle, a dead rock wall
I carry the boats, a ferryman
O wood! wood!
come here, little herons, a seed

come, gardeners! light, appear!
come, spread hands, pane of glass
blue whirls, come, smooth plain
the wind, of the sliding, of creatures 

on different levels

the pastures are burnt, lava seething
shepherds are waiting, restless, trampling with their wings

dogs, smelling themselves, the wolf-dogs
here the memory stands, the order, the signs of the future

—from The Selected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun

Creative Write:  How do you define yourself?  Write your secrets; what's unsayable? 
Unearth the unknowable. Follow the tracks. Probe the indescribable.