Van den Hövel | Coherence in Consequence
Imagine them in black, the morning heat losing
within this day that floats. And always there is the
being, and the not-seeing on their way to—
The days they approach and their sharpest aches
will wrap experience until knowledge is
translucent, the frost on which they find
themselves slipping. Never mind the loose mindless
grip of their forms reflected in the eye-watering
hues of the surface, these two will survive in their
capacity to meet, to hold the other beneath the
plummeting, in the depths below each step full of
avoidance. What they create will be held up, will
resume: the appetite is bigger than joy.
indestructible. for never was it independent from
who they are. who will be.
Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other as the
same pulsing compassion would break the most
orthodox heart.
Painting by Anna Van den Hövel | “Blue Hole” / Cetina River / Croatia // Acryl / Varnish / Mortar // 180×240 cm | @arthoevelvanden
Poem by Claudia Rankine | “Coherence in Consequence” | Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014), which received the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2013 to 2018.
