Ekphrasis 1: Jean + Teju Cole
March 13, 2007
by Jean Morris of this too
*
Traveling Mercies
Let the sieving-out
of what is possible
from what has been
given, the work of
naming the touchable,
the not-knowing,
the staying imperfectly
still, the question
that comes at 2am
and won’t stop ringing
the doorbell to the brain,
the being journeyed
through, the trembling
in the spinal-cord,
the walking with a limp,
the understanding that
passes all peace,
the half-light after too
long a light, the end
of unceasing renovation,
the shadow life, continue.
by Teju Cole
Categories: Ekphrasis
Jean Morris, Teju Cole
qarrtsiluni 
Your big helpings of gerunds and gerund-like words turn actions and experience into awareness and gratitude. You can really assure the fellow traveler! (I come away from this believing that I can bless, too.)
The next-to-last stanza is my favorite. I LOVE the feeling of “the half-light after too / long a night,” and I’m still having fun getting my brain around “Let the . . . end of unceasing renovation . . . continue.”
(You knew I might have a lot of pent-up comments, Teju, since you turned off the comments feature on miracle speech!)
And the picture and the poem are well-teamed horses. What an evocative photo.
That photo is so film noir! Is he coming or going? We can only be sure he’s moving through.
I also love the half-light of the poem – the question that “won’t stop ringing/the doorbell to the brain” – great image. And all the unceasing movement, mostly it seems of the involuntary, perpetual type.
Leslee, going, as I recall. But away is always also towards.