Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Paul Auster


WHITE NIGHTS

No one here,
and the body says: whatever is said
is not to be said.  But no one 
is a body as well, and what the body says
is heard by no one
but you.

Snowfall and night. The repetition
of a murder 
among the trees. The pen
moves across the earth: it no longer knows
what will happen, and the hand that holds it
has disappeared.

Nevertheless, it writes.
It writes: in the beginning,
among the trees, a body came walking
from the night.  It writes:
the body's whiteness
is the color of earth.  It is earth,
and the earth writes: everything
is the color of silence.

I am no longer here. I have never said
what you say
I have said. And yet, the body is a place
where nothing dies. And each night,
from the silence of the trees, you know
that my voice
comes walking toward you.




PAUL AUSTER
from Disappearances, Selected Poems
Overlook Press

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