Still thinking about Prospero and what he gave up (willingly? or just with resigned self-knowledge and foresight?), and having felt the pain of an elderly friend who is mourning great losses in his abilities to move around in the world, enjoy things he used to, write masterful sentences, and be himself, I’ve been exploring this subject in the poems I’m currently writing—the magic of various sorts that is everywhere, in the simplest things (a cup of tea, a bird feather) or most elaborate (a ceremonial bush buffalo costume from an African artist), animating the world for us; and the power of words, which can—like archaeology—reclaim magic, stories, wonder, from the past, as well as performing spells of their own.
I’ve been especially conscious of the ability of words to conjure a place, a mood; to return us to people we want more than anything to be with; to show us again the color of an old light-dappled wall behind the table where we sat and talked for hours one forgotten afternoon, the road we walked one summer or earliest spring trying to find traces of the elusive Etruscans, the school which gave us our first friends and taught us other magic (reading, drama, shaping heads from clay), the white cat that vanished up the ancient stairs of a far distant town we have never seen again— until now, summoned and put down on the page.
Shared words are still more powerful, and the magic of our new technologies allows instant linking with other times, places, images, words, other attempts to bring back what is gone (this link to my ramblings in Florence and Fiesole, for instance), other ways of reclaiming what we’ve been and what we want to be.
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