Ars Geologica
Today I will teach you the poem of the wall.
Don’t plumb it. Stones
don’t allow uniformity
of line, although
some will break off outcroppings, digressive
noses with their hammers
but that’s a sin against
stones. Concentrate on fitting one
rock striated with quartz or hardened
lava into a rock
veined with pyrite, that almost-gold.
Then do it again with granite.
No mortar. Each rock must bear
the weight and share
the weight in three dimensions.
How high? Let the stones
have their say. Here,
put your ear to the wall.
Nothing? You must hear
the enjambment: stone
stONE, STONE, STone, stone.
—Celia Bland