Words for Departure

Louise Bogan

Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.

When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer

pavements,

The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,

Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots

As among grotesque trees.

Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond.

Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour,

The afternoon sifted coolness

And people drew together in streets becoming deserted.

There was a moon, and light in a shop-front,

And dusk falling like precipitous water.

Hand clasped hand

Forehead still bowed to forehead—

Nothing was lost, nothing possessed

There was no gift nor denial.

I have remembered you.

You were not the town visited once,

Nor the road falling behind running feet.

You were as awkward as flesh

And lighter than frost or ashes.

You were the rind,

And the white-juiced apple,

The song, and the words waiting for music.

You have learned the beginning;

Go from mine to the other.

Be together; eat, dance, despair,

sleep, be threatened, endure.

You will know the way of that.

But at the end, be insolent;

Be absurd—strike the thing short off;

Be mad—only do not let talk

Wear the bloom from silence.

And go away without fire or lantern

Let there be some uncertainty about your departure.

593

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Snails by Francis Ponge

Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.

(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)

One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and  revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.

During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.

Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.

They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.

What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.

It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.