Resurrection (Cento)

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rocks and fog


Resurrection (Cento) 

Everything we love
returns to the ground.

Each syllable is the work of sabotage,
a breeze seeping from the heart of the rocks.

They are my last words
or what I intend my last words to be.

I think just how my shape will rise,
a miracle, anywhere light moves.

*****

A cento is composed of lines borrowed from other poets. “Resurrection” owes its existence to the poetry of Tishani Doshi, Paul Auster, Antonella Anedda, Sean Hill,
Emily Dickinson, and Ruth Ellen Kocher. I urge you to seek out their work. It astounds!

 
ladybug

77 thoughts on “Resurrection (Cento)”

  13. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a cento. Very interesting idea, as is the poem you “built.” Maybe taking syllables from the poems is an act of “sabotage” in way. Kind of like the cento is about how you make a cento. Maybe you did not mean it like that but my imagination does.

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  26. Thank you, Robert. I’d never heard of centos before, but I like the fact that, according to Wikipedia, the word cento comes from the Greek and means “to plant slips” in the sense of slip=small cutting. Well, well.

    Do you know the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss cover of the Sam Phillips song “Sister Rosetta goes before us,” where ‘slips’ of Sister Rosetta’s words are sewn into the body of the song. Not quite the same, I know, but a gorgeous song. (Reminded of it on Desert Island Discs last Friday, so it’s at the front of my mind.)

    Thanks again, for teaching me something new and fascinating
    Elaine

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