If the Dead Could Sing
A Journal in Poetry
by
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Origami
as it turns out
in the beginning
everything is folded like paper:
oak leaves
and butterfly wings
a cricket’s leg
an elephant’s ear
the skin of a snake
the breath of a dragon
folded
like dark matter
the lattice
on which cosmic dust solidified
clumped, and grew
into highways of starlight
from there to here
what does it matter
if I am a bird in the sky
part of the flock
that shoots from the woods
scouring for food
or earthbound
a creature of uncounted folds
like the earthworm
digging my way through heavy soil
soft folds of flesh, burrowing
through darkness
leaving tunnels in my wake
like highways
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About the Book
Poet Elvira Borgstädt always envisioned growing old in good health, endowed with vitality and strength. After a productive life, she wanted to take her time retracing the ancient steps of Machu Picchu, visiting the Valley of the Kings, and going on a walkabout in the Australian outback. Instead, things took a different turn when multiple sclerosis forced Elvira to re-focus her entire life at the age of forty-two.
Inspiration arose out of illness and brought her back to writing. If the Dead Could Sing is comprised of sixty poems that document the author’s journey from the depth of despair to transcendence.
Elvira denies nothing, having recognized the approaching beast with a clear understanding of its brutal path. She turns her gaze away from illness and embraces the moments, details, and unexpected gifts in her daily life. Despite difficulty, she is peacefully assured that in the depth of suffering lies the golden path that leads back to the eternal source from which everything springs.
Elvira Borgstadt’s powerful collection calls us to the “tapestry of living light.” … As she carefully tracks such imagery and living, Borgstadt wonders if she has the “guts to go on,” tells of existing through pain, and of when the body dreams. Presciently, she writes “As it turns out / in the beginning / everything is folded like paper,” and demonstrates how life is, layered into, onto and unto itself. Read Borgstadt’s If the Dead Could Sing, a reverie and a return.
—Susan Scarlata
About the Author
Elvira Borgstädt is a world traveler, student, entrepreneur, and poet. Her quiet mysticism is informed by the teachings of the Tao Te Ching and the thinking of Meister Eckhard—a 13th Century Dominican monk, whom she studied in depth while a graduate student at the University of Chicago.