The major difference between poetry and thought is perhaps that poetry already exists, whereas thought does not yet think. Or, rather, thought arose only to decline at once into philosophy, that is, into metaphysics. The dialogue with poetry could begin only by appealing to thought that was bearly possible, to thought at least unencombered by metaphysics and its conceptual retinue. Only with such thought was poetry ready to converse. Always conceived by Heidegger as a dialogue with poetry, thought, if it has yet to come, is nevertheless in its advent, less the novice, for having dared to listen to poets. But when, for its part, poetry embraces thought, this does not, as some have erroneously believed, imply any metaphysical vocation or inflation of its language. Rather, poetry in its own way demolishes metaphysical representation. At a single bound it leaps ahead of thought without needing first to overtake it. “The fate of the world,” Heidegger has written, “is heralded in the work of the poets without already being manifest as history of being.” And Char: “To each collapse of proof, the poet responds with a salvo of future.” If a salvo salutes, it also saves. Heraclitus is a savior in this sense. If thought must resort to lengthy meditation to join him in his pre-Socratic remoteness, the poet has already acknowledged him as a kindred spirit. Thus, the contrast between the meditative slowness that “thinks uphill” and the speedy poem that “races directly to the summit” conceals a secret closeness. That closeness occurs in a common site: speech, and the language that is spoken. Only within the illuminated enclosure of language does man find a home by losing himself. Without such an enclosure nothing opens up. “In the swallow’s loop a storm takes shape, a garden is made.” From the first, thought responded to the finiteness of poetry by transcribing its message. The initiators of thought, from the dawn of Greek civilization, thought that the Greek tongue, thereby opening up a space for themselves, a territory in which everyone thinks as much as his neighbor, but each in his own way.

“The poem,” Char said underneath the chestnut tree, “has no memory. I am urged to move ahead.” And as we know, he also said, “of all clear waters, poetry is what lingers least under the reflections of its bridges.” Heidegger admired this speed, whose law is to burn its bridges. If the poet never exists but in passing, if he leaves only traces of his presence, he nevertheless sets out for the future from the most distant past. Only the arrow’s vital if elusive trajectory bestows depth on the drawing back from which it emanates. “Behind modern poetry lies a vast territory that is dark only at its edges. Over this frozen expanse no banner flies for long: it gives itself to us when it wishes and reclaims itself at will. Yet it makes us see the Lightning, and its untapped resources.” When thought has become more thinking than philosophy, it, too, will have to contend with this frozen expanse, and to this task it will have to bring a patience quite different from that of history, which can at best construct landmarks in the tundra. But little by little, as the thawing wind begins to blow, the immobile has begun to move. What existed no more has begun to stir once again. The language of being has begun to speak, responding in its way to the declaration of the poet, who went ahead in search of his own echo.

And so on a summer night it came to pass that two individuals, different from each other yet of the same race and both distinguished by the sparkle of solitude, came together, for they differed only within their shared concern to shun words so that speech might exist.

P. 162-163

¶ 7:56 AM