Broken Antenna
—Receiving Before Language—
The roof retained it—
a weather-anointed dereliction,
its articulate wreckage
still ascending
through the firmamental grammar
of unanswering air.
The neighbourhood,
custodians of decipherable things,
declared it obsolete.
They trusted only
those frequencies
already domesticated by speech,
signals
that arrived
having survived interpretation.
Toward vesper,
the wind uncodiced
its invisible leaves,
and the antenna commenced
its liturgy
of immaculate static.
Not absence.
Ante-language.
The unconscripted province
from which utterance
would one day recruit
its alphabet.
Then,
without announcement,
the impossible
altered jurisdiction.
No transmission descended.
Instead,
there accumulated
every sentence
creation had declined
before consenting
to become pronounceable.
Primeval bereavement—
antecedent
to water's apprenticeship
as tears.
An inaugural horizon,
before distance
persuaded luminosity
to undertake pilgrimage.
The first appellation,
waiting
for a mortal object
equal
to inheriting it.
Above,
the constellations
did not illumine.
They precipitated
around attention itself,
as though every star
were merely
listening
after acquiring visibility.
Even darkness
remained provisional—
an erased manuscript
whose vanished text
continued
to illuminate the page.
Only then
did I perceive
that static
had never interrupted meaning.
Meaning
had interrupted static.
Reality
had first arrived
grammarless.
Language,
with impeccable intentions,
had reduced it
to comprehension.
Morning
ratified the customary horizon.
Someone,
glancing upward,
pronounced
its earthly verdict.
"Broken."
The syllables
approached the metal,
hesitated,
and returned
unadmitted.
The antenna remained,
its fracture
keeping vigil
at the frontier
where the cosmos
still rehearsed itself
before consenting
to become
the world.
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