& if my God was the Blank & not the Flood—
or the whirlwind which would furiously preen
in front of Job & brag at being God—
if God was the Blank that washed the world so clean
then I was crouched inside the carapace
of God that was the Rubbed-Out World. What a gift!
I thought, knees to chest on an outcrop, face
to face with the eager water—like a thief
who’s just outclimbed a pack of guard dogs—He
had blossomed round me in His nothingrose
of silence that I may have the privilege
to name again all of His blanknesses.
I stood up in the dark & said a word
& it flew hands out from my mouth to beat
its way through God: flying like a blind bird.
& I was there to let the noone-light speak:
to pass my hands through the dust like a clock:
to chain each undrowned thing to its ticking name,
each name as blind to the beast that I had locked
it to as I: blind: therefore free from blame.
Cameron Clark is poetry editor of Literary Matters and has had poems published or forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review, Blackbox Manifold, New Verse Review, Autumn Sky, Ekphrastic Review, Agenda, and others. He blogs at Minor Tiresias on Substack and cohosts the podcast Sleerickets.
Photo by Lukas Hron on Unsplash
