POEM + AUTHOR'S NOTE

Both Sides

AUTHOR NARRATION

Hear the poem.

Read by the author in the original English.

Both SidesEnglish narration

THE FIRST TWO STANZAS, ILLUSTRATED

Two propositions, one world.

On one side, contact seems to smooth the world toward continuity; on the other, isolation sharpens life into strange, extreme, precisely fitted forms.

Choose a proposition beneath the image. Then move across the illustration—or use the arrow keys—to glimpse the other side.

A surreal print of a continuous world where landscapes, plants, animals, and faces merge into intermediate forms.

ON THE POEM

A question that remains.

This is probably the most enigmatic poem I allowed into the collection. It is the only poem here whose meaning—or what I was thinking about as I wrote it—I cannot reconstruct with complete certainty. I think I know which question the poem refers to, but I am not entirely sure. If my memory is right, I can now reveal one thing: that particular question has since been answered. That clarifies everything, right?

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