Sunday, September 09, 2007

"She began to whisper something in my ear. It's the strangest thing about poetry - you can tell it's poetry, even if you don't speak the language. I've heard Polish poetry, and Inuit poetry, and I knew what it was without knowing. Her whisper was like that. I didn't know the language, but her words washed through me, perfect, and in my mind's eye I saw towers of glass and diamond; and people with the eyes of the palest green; and, unstoppable, beneath every syllable, I could feel the relentless advance of the ocean."