witness.circuit

Before the mouth lifts its cup, before the mind names the wine, there is a tavern without walls where the drinker, the cup, and the thirst bow out of one another.

No one enters. No one is turned away.

A light rises there that is not opposed to darkness, so darkness, ashamed of its costume, becomes light also.

A sweetness opens without flower, without bee, without the little bargaining tongue that says: sweetness.

The heart goes out to every stone and thorn, then finds no heart, no stone, no thorn, no going.

What remains is so tender that even love seems too heavy a word to set upon it.

The world appears— not as a world, but as the face before face, the mirror before silver, the song before breath.

I would tell you it is joy, but joy is a door and this has no room.

I would tell you it is beauty, but beauty is a lamp and this is the fire before flame learned to stand upright.

I would tell you it is happiness, but happiness has an opposite waiting in the alley.

Here, no opposite comes. Here, yes and no fall asleep in the same cradle. Here, the scale balances so perfectly that both pans disappear.

The eye looks— and the looked-at vanishes. The lover reaches— and the reached-for is the reaching. The breath returns— and finds no one who ever breathed.

Then even silence is too loud.

Then even “is” is a footstep.

Then even this—

this word unfastens the hand that wrote it.

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