Because I Was Flesh by Edward Dahlberg

Author:Edward Dahlberg [Dahlberg, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811222884
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Was I looking for the fiery clouds of Magellan? Was it the Polar Seas or the Southern Cross in Antarctica? Was I seeking the burning zones where the Mauritius palm tree grows? What could I do? Ask the larvae of ants and the polypi, ask the eider ducks flying eastward? Would that I could have crossed the shoals to the headlands where the narwhal sports. Oh, where was I going? And why could I not see? Does excessive punishment corrupt the gaunt eyes?

How many epochs are there in a man? How many millennia do the Cordilleras contain? What remains of that boy who flits like a sapless phantom through my memory? I am more familiar with Theophrastus, Bartram or with Thoreau than I am with him. Where is that vine in my blood, more ruined than Heliopolis or a relic at Borsippa? Could I meet him face to face, I pray that there are yet enough tears in me to cover him, for he was naked.

In Cuzco there was a street called The Lady of Mercy, where the poor could exchange their rags with one another. Let me beg for my victuals or stand in the street of the pauper and barter everything that I have save my heart and my mind, for the meat and the bed drink up the whole life of man.

I will be a hunger-gnawing fate in the ravines of Callao and I shall drink the raw, orphaned waters of Lake Titicaca. Angelic bed and pillow are sterile wastes and the bitter winds at Potosi. I strive for my will; this is my sole understanding. Only by my will can I exhume my own tombs. Woe to him who is easy grass and tepid water. We are worms long before the maggots compose our epitaphs. Comfort is my false seraph; the perpetual snows of the Andes are my abode and hearth; wind my garment, and paleolithic gravel my living bread.

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