In a wasteland south of the Great Salt Lake, the man on the cliff edge calls,
his voice lost among the echoes. Each echo stranger than the last, more
removed from the throne and throat of human error. So vast the emptiness
I cannot tell you what is echo, what a voice. One bird becomes two,
two—in silence—one, and still, to me, the many. Where there is design,
there is a story. Where there is beauty, the ache of light that is everywhere
broken. Two birds become one, one the many, a flock against the sheer
indifferent glory of the palisades. Where there is beauty, there is chaos
in the beauty-shattered eye. If you are coming, bring water, figs, strong shoes.
Bring a friend. I will bring the silence of one friend who came and fell
(or was it jumped) and just kept falling, one day beneath the cliffs of Utah.
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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Author: Bruce Bond
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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