Noah Leventhal

Overture

Elsewhere. This, they say, is where the bird comes from.


First, there is a clearing. There is the place where the clearing begins. Where the clearing emerges from the noise of what is not the clearing.


It is known that the ground is full of pages. The remnants of pages. Their ashes.


The way feet compact ash is known.


First there is a tree, and the tree is a spoken thing. The tree is like the clearing. It begins when and where it is spoken.


Unlike the clearing, the tree precedes its beginning. Sometimes a bird lands in its branches.


Says the girl: “the forest is full” and “the forest is of noise”. This is before the girl discovers the clearing.


The girl hears birdsong but cannot conceive of the bird. Elsewhere lingers somewhere beyond the pages.


Before the clearing, there is noise. This is the same as silence.


The clearing itself is silence, so the noise is noise.


The clearing is also noise. It breaks the noise that is silence.


The clearing begins when and where clearing is spoken.


From the ashes of the page emerge the girl and where the girl is.


The bird sits on a branch of the tree and sings. The song is about the forest but has no language.


The bird sings forest from, and gives ashes to, the girl.


Says the girl: “time is broken” and also “what is time?”


What the clearing is aware of is known, though not spoken. What the clearing makes of the girl, the bird does not ask, though it might whistle to the tree.


The tree is preoccupied, consuming elsewhere.


Like a bird, they alight at the base of the tree. The bird watches what birdlike alights.


From the voice of the girl, the girl emerges.


Whose duty is it to answer questions? Certainly not the bird’s.


“Elsewhere,” says the girl, “must be somewhere around here.”

Noah Leventhal is.