Let Us
Let us
write without meaning
to
All
All the secrets of my work
reside
in the languages I have forgotten
I can’t remember
who it was
whispered this to me
At the Tomb of Artaud
At the tomb of Artaud
wherever it may be
we hear a howl, unmistakable,
the howl of a wounded wolf
gnawing at its foreleg
caught in the teeth
of a hunter’s steel trap
At the tomb of Artaud
wherever it may be
a sleeper and his double
throw dice made of bone
Should the dice fall
just so, they explain
it will snow
on the tomb of Artaud
Should they fall
otherwise
the earth will be dry
A dancer and her double
make love
on the bright stones
the light bringers
by the tomb of Artaud
that has become a book
of stone
they care not to read
whatever it may mean
as the fitful
iridescent
dragonflies alight
on the wet heat
of their bodies
Only later
will they piss on his grave
as a clock without hands
applauds in the dark
Poem
(Oct – Nov 2013)
It is true that we write
with one eye toward dying,
true that we write
with a blind eye,
eye blinded by a shadow
cast across the sun
or by a fictive glimpse
of the beloved. It is true
that we do not write,
that a measureless silence
writes in our place
of all it surveys
and cannot say, the phosphorous
rain, the lies of the prophets,
the table set for dinner
in a suddenly deserted house
of stone. What wild
storm swept them away, what
thing unforeseen, implements,
full pitchers and plates
still carefully arrayed
as if an evening meal
were always to come.
It is true that as we write
our skin grows transparent,
our bones brittle
and the words take leave
of what they’d thought to mean.
The scent of bay and mint
lingers nonetheless
by the scorched field’s
jagged edge
where in the jagged moment
nothing’s to be said.
To X
(Endarkenment)
Who is the night creature
that devoured the clover,
who the mathematician
who first solved to X?
The child lost in the house
in the dark corridors of the house
endless corridors of the house,
what child, what house?
Those blood-red nasturtiums—
I planted them for Arkadii
when I heard of his death
having forgotten
that I was not, not ever,
in this echoic life
to mention death
either of the self or the other,
the particle or the page
curled at its edges
by what random flame?
It is no match for the flame
to which the lovers are consigned
no match for the wind
that feeds the flame
no match for the fate
of the earth at our hands.
It is complex
the mathematics of lovers
where one plus one
equals what?
And the lost child
for who was not once
the lost child
and who will not
become so again?
By the River of the Fathers
we often gathered as kids.
It stank of chemicals and shit,
not the river’s fault,
not your fault, not mine,
a sacred, baptismal river, Arkadii,
your book has arrived
though you’ve suddenly left.
for Zina
To the Polish Poets
(March 2014)
This watch
carved it would appear
from a solid
titanium block
sits comfortably on the wrist
even magisterially—
a corrupt, despicable word—
magisterially nonetheless
and impervious to the elements
as advertised.
It is what the children
of the present age
call scornfully
a dedicated device
serving no purpose
other than the seconds
the minutes the hours
rendered in analogue
no indicators for a coming storm
or a great wave approaching
the ever crumbling coast
or for the earth as it shifts
suddenly beneath us
no indicators
for the first veiled light
of dawn
and the seabirds’
accompanying swarms.
Impassive of face
free of memory free of time
this block.
A Late Supper
In a digital dream
it is always one in the morning.
Asger Jorn and my father
sit at the dining room table
discussing hotel management
with Marcel Duchamp
who has just coined the phrase,
“Dinner is not served.”
Salt cellar, pepper grinder, candles,
the roasted head of a goat
and a vintage bottle of red
from Ceaus¸escu’s private stash,
liberated upon his death.
My pen. My pen is leaking ink,
Nicolae, and these flowers are wilting
though freshly cut.
Cavafy would approve, I suspect,
of the flowers if not the goat
were he here now,
but he never leaves his room.
Poem Devoid of Meaning
We turn our heads away
from the three-headed lady
We avert our gaze
from the lizard-limbed one
the feathered one
in her wire cage
and Thimble Boy sipping
his smoked China tea
We exchange warm greetings
with the world’s tallest man
(a friend of my father
across the distant years)
a giant named Saul
who has just days
to live and no more
An announcement is made:
the captain has abandoned ship
and only minutes remain
Somewhere I once read
that anyone can
pilot a ship
through raging waters
should he demonstrate
clarity of mind
and purity of heart
I have removed my heart
and placed it on the deck
the better for all to examine it:
tell-tale signs of wear
among the valves
and significant rust
along the vena cava
traces of mercury
and a hint of cesium
in the left anterior
Fellow passengers shut tight their eyes
except for the three-headed lady
who notes, It is good, good enough,
mon semblable, mon frère, sail on
Strange Now
Strange now to find ourselves
in these later, lateral days,
to lose ourselves in this slowing time
of a late, lateral light,
a slant, abbreviated light
knowing that we all, each one,
once thought to become
waves beating, waves retreating,
wheeling, oval eyes of storm,
as if there were such things
as if such things could be
could have been
We do know
that the cry
concerns no one at all
Someone first said this
at song’s dark antipodes,
not one of my friends
in the Brazil of endless song,
not the poet of brilliant,
invisible colors
who despairs of her work,
never ceases to mourn,
not the Cape Verdean singer
to whom I sent a kiss
across uncharted waters,
a kiss graciously acknowledged,
night is such,
not
Icarus, not the cardinal
emerging in fire from the dense,
sugar-scented
privet, not a memory
of gentle hills
invented to please
or console, we borrow
a letter from dawn,
one from dusk,
one from the sun,
one from the sudden
rain, one last
from the howling of dogs
and claim
that this sudden alphabet
is ours
Falling Down in America
Every three seconds someone over sixty-five
falls down in America.
Our records show
that you are over sixty-five
and may therefore have already
fallen down in America
maybe more than once.
Perhaps upon entering your bath
you slipped
and cracked open your skull
and subsequently drowned
in a pool of blood.
If so, disregard this notice.
Perhaps while gazing at the sea
distractedly one day
your balance failed
and the waves carried you away
toward the irradiated swells
of Fukushima.
If so, never mind—
the flesh has already peeled
from your limbs
and your eyes
have melted in their sockets
in which case
you should disregard this notice.
We need hardly remind you
that many of your friends
and relatives, perhaps beloved uncles,
aunts, cousins, your seven brothers
and sisters, parents assuredly,
may have succumbed in some manner
to the fateful equation
of gravity and age.
In addition, it is likely
that your investments recently caved
and as a result, from the shock,
you fainted upon the cheap
Mexican tiles
of your dining room floor
and days later awoke
among impersonal professionals,
masked and clad in white,
and addressing you
as if you were a child.
If so, you now know
that you are utterly alone
in this life.
Please favor us with a reply
regarding our one-time offer
which will soon expire.
Proposition
To write as perfectly as Euclid
was always the goal
even as he turned out
to be perfectly wrong.
The stars are not above
but somewhere within
and following from this
no lines are straight
no beginnings no ends
and the drought-dry streams
parch our voices
so that songs of dust
billow forth
and betray the lovers’ trust.
Beside this world another
orphaned from time
where darkness and light
dance on a turtle’s back
and rage at each other in rhyme.
Beneath this world another
precise mirror of our own
where chaos is abiding law
and memory nothing at all.
Follows the careening world
world of clown cars and thought balloons
of hat tricks and punch lines
the funniest of women and men
and the most blessed
hang themselves hourly
among the orderly rows
of ice-bright almond trees
as if to cause laughter to freeze
for the remainder of time.
There they become
the fruit of such gods
as do not appear
and never speak
those who laugh silently
at the very idea
of cones and primes
angles and spheres
motion and rest
atoms and amulets.
Your words ever perfect, mad Euclid.
Addendum
Needless to say, as we now know—or always knew—there are infinite worlds beyond, or beside, or within that of Euclid, far too many to measure or to name. For example, there is the world of the Mute Queen, whose subjects must never speak, lest she thereby discover her disability. And the parallel world of silence, well-known to poets, where only the space between words signifies and words themselves are empty, no more than sounds echoing in the still air. And in another world, still another, there is no present, nothing but the past. We are what has been. We loved, we made love, we sang, we composed new songs, we danced in the bodies that were ours, laughed then, fought pointless wars, pillaged, gloried in it all, gazed at a stream that was, a city on a hill, a shining city that was, where is is no more.
Et in Arcadia
It rained frogs.
We were the frogs
and the rain.
As the planets fled their orbits
apples ripened
in the orchards to our north.
We bit into the planets
as if they were apples.
They crackled
between our teeth
and their juices
streamed off our jowls
like syllables from c
hildhood.
Our mad brothers, mad
lovers, mad others
were already gone.
The bees and their hexagons,
their dances, were gone,
the whales and their songs.
Shoeless we walked
across the stellated,
the glowing, irradiated
meadows of glass.
Have you always
had this tremor?
she asked.
Yes.
The Republic
They bellow, these silent
creatures of the carousel,
these dragons and centaurs,
unicorns and sea-beasts,
and always the horses,
dappled, candy-striped, pure white.
Their eyes are ablaze
with what they cannot see,
ablaze with the thoughts
they cannot think.
They cannot think
of the spinning world
in which they turn.
They cannot hear
the music they encircle
pouring from the pipes
of the wheezing calliope,
its melodies bent by the wind
into the semitones
of an unintended world.
And the children, the wild
children as they ride,
laugh in their pleasure
and in their terror
at a slow-dawning knowledge
that the beasts will devour them.
After
And to write a poem
beneath the sickle moon
is barbaric
And to trace a poem
upon the lover’s body
is barbaric
And to write a poem
amidst the dust
amidst the dust
storm of history is barbaric
And to read a poem
To read
while the book is burning
and to enter the Paper House
while the streets are burning
To enter the Paper House
which is silent
And to hear the song
should we call it a song
soonest gone
of the cicadas
in the parching heat
when to drink
of the lover’s liquid
is barbaric
And to wander
in a dark wood
wander lost
in a dark wood
to look
and to begin
to say farewell
to begin
and to dwell
to dwell upon
to dwell among