“A duck takes flight …”

 

THE POEM We talk merely to sell the ironmongery of ourselves. In the marshy pool of everything we say, we waste words like wind that moves the sluggish rushes, the reed-bed. But suddenly a duck takes flight and its feathers gleam with colours: the poem. Listen to the beating of wings, gaze at it, your shotguns of silence lowered, for now.

From Maps of Desire by Manuel Forcano, published by Arc.