nameabledays Archive One

Pictures as Signs

from the China photography of Claro Cortes

1. Chinese Brushes

Wands of lions
Scepters of dragons
Wings of phoenixes
Manes of stallions
Horns of oxen & rams
Moods of macaques
Romps of rapscallions
All the fates
Of the zodiac—
Worry beads of jade
Ivory & marble
Staffs of brooms
Of camel hair & squirrel
Sweeping the ether
Shaping signs
Uttering names
Of planets & moons:
Beards of
One thousand
Philosophers
Meditating

2. Bongs

Light
Behind
Above around
Glass & chrome
The color & sparkle
Of the mind
Cut in crystal
The winding &
Bending of perception
Does not need
The gurgle of water
The breathing of
Cannabis to
Make you
Dream

3. Goats on a Rock on Lanyu Island

Hoof and crag, bone and stone,
Sea, and the horns of island,
Dream in the drift of continents,
The bursting of volcanoes:
All the history of rock, shell, crystal,
Chose them to be here.

Hoof and crag, bone and stone,
And the water that washes,
Melts and freezes, all in one ball,
The clashing of islands,
Chose them to be here:
Before the eye that sees them now

Risen from slime and mold,
Mote in the eye of the tidal pool,
The hole in the center
Of the whirlpool that stirred
From sleep the being of rock and flesh,
Hoof and crag, bone and stone.

4. The Eye

& the eye beholding them then
And now chose them

Transforms them in points of light:
The old code of the universe:

The trigrams of the I Ching
& all sixty-four permutations

Of Yin & Yang, becoming one
Line & the broken line only:

The Nothing & the One

The Binary Sefirot of Light,
All the Ten Emanations are Two

Only: the Nothing & the One
Becoming Light again:

Shape & Word: the Power
To become the Utterance.

Wisdom, even Love, & the Ground
Where we stand, all the Majesty

Or the Precipice
Between bone & stone

Flesh & rock
Mind & the Void

Is Nothing & One:

Tif’eret & Netzah,
Beauty & Eternity, only.


Marne L. Kilates
October 18-21, 2007

Zamboanguita

It is the morning before time
When there is neither sea nor sky
But one contiguous space, and men
In their fragile boats touching both,
To reap by hand or simple net
What God does not need to give,
For all is always within reach.

Not a shadow of mountain,
Only the littlest ripple of sound,
Touches this thin film of space
Tremulous at the edge of time,
As only sun or cloud will mar its face,
Or rain dimple the ghost of water,
And all the world is revealed.

Something in the rare hour
When light, air, and water conspire
To become one, as if indivisible,
And thus invisible, reminds us
When we were perhaps still
In the mind of God, a seed
Of quiet waiting to be uttered.


Marne L. Kilates
October 19, 2007

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS by CLARO CORTES, Beijing