right hand pointing

 

 

José Angel Araguz
 

Naos Explains Everything
Via Crumbs

p o e m s

 

(i)

 

 

 

 

a crumb becomes so               

broken from a whole—

 

from the meeting of mother    father               we

                        crumb

(iii)

 

crumbs cling to lips                conversation continues

some

 

fall         some hold—

 

were you to look down from the sky

each one of us

 

a crumb holding,

a crumb falling 

 

 

(iv)

 

crumbs are cleared away

from hands      from table

 

a symbol of being       in the way      

scattered

 

at the end, we clear away—

 

(v)

 

whatever food             the eyes           are made of

is eaten            by joys            by sorrows

 

the crumbs spill across            the face, a table

overrun with light 

 

 

(vi)

 

rain                  clouds clearing their table

of crumbs

(vii)

 

a crumb breaks off                  becomes crumb;

a crumb breaks off from that

 

—who remains crumb?

(viii)

 

there is the thinker who saw infinity

in the paring down of a thing

 

by half             and then that half              by half

 

and on, believing you

could never reach

nothing,

 

there would always be

a half—

 

the problem of Xeno

breaks down

the problem of crumbs

 

(ix)

 

the ant is Atlas under a crumb—

 

Atlas carries the crumb of the earth—

(x)

 

Poetry as a matter of crumbs:

hinting at the food of experience

 

from what little

falls behind.

(xi)

 

Had the men writing the Bible waited longer,

it might have been,

 

not ashes to ashes, dust

to dust, but rather

 

from crumbs

to crumbs.