Elegy
By Lyn Hejinian
I am writing now in preconceptions
Those of sex and ropes
Many frantic cruelties occur to the flesh of the
imagination
And the imagination does have flesh to destroy
And the flesh has imagination to sever
The mouth is just a body filled with imagination
Can you imagine its contents
The dripping into a bucket
And its acts
The ellipses and chaining apart
The feather
The observer
The imagination, bare, has nothing to confirm it
There's just the singing of the birds
The sounds of the natural scream
A strange example
The imagination wishes to be embraced by freedom
It is laid bare in order to be desired
But the imagination must keep track of the flesh
responding—its increments of awareness—a
slow progression
It must be beautiful and it can't be free
-for John Zorn, after his “Elegy”
Copyright Credit: Copyright © 1994 by Lyn Hejinian. Copyright © 1995-2007 Dia Art Foundation.
Source: 50: A Celebration of Sun & Moon Classics (Sun & Moon Press, 1995)