THEY WILL SEW THE BLUE SAIL

from Landscapes on a Train | Cole Swensen


Land flayed the one green the only living grey. Into the small sky a line of bare

Trees etched clean a line of windmills counting that count on. Wind off a west

Wall gone off some somewhere else open a plain of bitter sun. Came in a bit in wind.







Sun down harsh, one small town, one farm gone, down, hammer on and a single

House standing in the sun, standing warm. A tree or two of hands. A factory oddly

Fond. More windmills keeping time. Time to road. Road to grey where sky breaks

Down. A tiny white car all green in its private time.







Church spire amid windmills shelter. Cattle under. The farm offing windward. And longly

Seven horses, herded. Is not the same nor the same number are seven horses are turned

To trees. Makes a forest you can see through a forest light in names. Bends down the sun

Down on cutting a river swimming with horses all taken for wind.







Six or seven buildings and their six or seven bare trees. Falling in and into the falling distance: effect

Of noon, an odd speed under winter air rushing green; cows in place as the green rushes past. Several

Flat ponds separated only by their banks and their trees seemed blue. Even the edges; the edges

Are even, even precise. All water is necessarily precise. And as awake as any may come, one against

Its sharpened state. Mistletoe crowding the emptiness of the empty branches of emptied trees. Slicing

Evenly the thin light shredding the ribbons of thin light to strings.






(The Volta | They Will Sew The Blue Sail | Bio)