A path has been beaten diagonally across the field. Through the long grass – but who owns this field? who wants this grass? – the path. What year is it? Which summer is this? Always the path – and the passing diagonally across the field to the river. Across – but now it seems as though it takes forever, and that I am still there, on the path, crossing the field. How is it that the path turned itself into the enormity of all summers?
You were between relationships, you said. Tired of one relationship, and waiting for another: that’s when we could see one another. How was it my friendships began and ended in the time of suspense? Was I your confidante? But I do not believe what you said to me could not be said to another. You spoke lightly as you always spoke; you wanted to speak, of that I was sure, but speech was easy for you, and if it was not me to whom you spoke, there were others.
Yes, speech was lightness itself – you spoke, and I spoke because of the lightness of your speech; did it matter what was said? I think we said everything – I think we spoke until everything was said. And then? Begin again; start speaking again. But did I not sense, sometimes, a different kind of lightening? Was it not as though speech itself had worn thin, that it was stretched, now, as the sky was stretched, and it belonged to the path that unlimited itself and became the whole field and then the whole sky?
We spoke – we exchanged words, but what also declared itself by way of those words, that exchange? The currency of common language is worn out, said Mallarme. So will his poetry set itself against what is commonly exchanged; there will be a new standard, a greater one, which belongs to the Book that is always to come. So would his poetry be magnetised by that coming speech: by the gold standard of the Book. What magnetised our speech, in the field, on the path? Because it did seem to be drawn from itself – that what was exchanged belonged to no common measure. Incommensurable speech! Speech by way of the path’s dispersal! How was it that the blue sky spoke of itself in our words?
Soon after, you found the boyfriend of whom, for a while, you spoke about on the phone. I remember your excitement – already, you were trying for a child! After three days, and everything seemed so right, and you were trying for a child! You had stepped across the threshold, and who was I, who remained on the other side, hesitant in life, at the brink of life, but yet to step into the other world? The phonecalls stopped coming; that was just. You disappeared, I barely saw you – that too was just. And did I recognise you when we did meet in your new clothes and your makeup and your boyfriend on your arm?
The next summer, the same field, and the same path. I was speaking to someone else – did it matter? It was someone else to whom I was speaking – but what did that change? The conversation weighed the same and turned around the same. You (the new you) spoke lightly, and I, confident in speech because your confidence, also spoke that way. Our words stretched themselves across the sky: what could not be said on this summer’s day, this afternoon, on this path? You were between relationships, and I? I was to be the one who accompanied you to the threshold’s edge.
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