"
"The voice we hear in
��Robert Boyers
1.0 � создание файла и вёрстка (sibkron)
for Harry and Sean Christophe
These moments are immortal, and most transitory of all; no content may be secured from them�. Beams of their power stream into the ordered world and dissolve it again and again.
Horses were turned loose in the child�s sorrow. Black and roan, cantering through snow.
The way light fills the hand with light, November with graves, infancy with white.
The way they withdrew from the child�s body and spoke as if it were not there.
What ghost comes to the bedside whispering
��With its
A dwarf ghost? A closet of empty clothes?
Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.
Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.
At the end of the hall, it sleepwalks into a mirror wearing mother�s robe.
A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face.
The bookcase knows, and also the darkness of books. Long passages
Endless histories
A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it came.
Words holding the scent of an asylum fifty years. It is fifty years, then.
The child hears from within:
And unbeknownst to us, what these fields had been.
for Sean Christophe
The moon slips from its cerement, and my son, already disappearing into a man, moves toward his bed for the night, wrapped in a towel of lake scent.
A viola, night-voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes.
A woman alone rows across the lake. Her life is intact, but what she thought could never be taken has been taken. An iron bridge railing one moment its shadow the next.
It is
Even the most broken life can be restored to its moments.
My son rows toward me against the wind. For thirty-six years, he rows. In 1986, he is born in Paris.
Bice the clouds, watchet, indigo, woad.
We lived overlooking the cemetery. It was the summer of the Paris bombings. I walked him among the graves for what seemed hours but were clouds drifting across marble.
Believing it possible to have back the field in its flowering, my friend has brought me here, has given me an open window, the preludes, an echo of my son�s laughter on the rumpled lake.
The human soul weighs twenty-six grams. A cathedral can become a dovecote.
I was born in America just after the war. My legs grew deformed, and so they had to be fitted with a special brace.
At night I banged the brace against the wooden crib bars and cried (so they say). The cries had to be stopped before I woke �the entire house.�
In the morning, footsteps, a wind caught between roofs. From the quarry of souls they come into being: supernal lights, concealed light, light which has no end.
The room turns white again, and white. For years I have opened my eyes and not known where I was.
It was like a kettle wrapped in towels and bubbling, spewing camphor clouds against walls turning the world beyond the windows white.
I couldn�t move, and when they lifted the tented sheet covering the crib it was only to touch my face.
This was the year my mother�s mother died in the asylum, Eloise. Mindless. Without protection from the world.
Her hair, white, everywhere, her eyes the windows of a ruined house.
Like a kettle, but made of apothecary glass, so that it was possible to watch the liquid boil inside.
Sometime later I would find the suitcase of clippings: walls smeared with waste, bedsheets mapped in urine, and how later, when Eloise burned, they were still tied to their chairs.
By late summer, the fields are high with foamflower, fleabane, loosestrife, mullein, and above these wings like chapel windows.
The first love is also there, running through the field as if he could escape.
They were in their chairs and in their beds, tied to the bedrails. Some had locked themselves in the dispensary, as more than fire they feared the world.
Here grow bellflower and blind gentian, blue-eyed grass and touch-me-not. I don�t know who came into that room but spirits also came.
Objects in the room grew small grew large again. The doll laughed like my mother�s mother.
In every future window their white gowns, a stone ruin behind a sign forbidding trespass for years to come.
They came into the room and left, and later my mother would suffer the same emptiness.
In the years just after the war, it was not as certain that a child would live to be grown. Trucks delivered ice and poured coal into bins below the houses.
You see, one can live without having survived.
I have returned to Paris: a morning flecked with sparrows, the garret casements open over the blue-winged roofs.
The two-storey windows a spackled fresco of sky.
From the
At the farm-table many afternoons with the windows open, I conjugated
The doors of the coal chutes open. It is the grave of
One does not forget stones versus tanks. When our very existence broadcast an appeal. Shall not say
A little later, a burial on a hillside in a pine box.
The empty flesh like stone beneath my hands�
A field lifted into a train window.
Under the ice, hay flowers, anne�s lace and lupines. My father digging through snow in a fatigue no sleep could relieve.
And the first love, sequestered in an attic room until spring.
We row to the middle of the lake in a guideboat a century old, water pewter in a coming-storm light, a diminishing signature of smoke from one of the cabins.
Will his life open to hers, she asks, now that she has traveled all the way to the edge of herself?
At night we sleep under blankets also a century old, beside cold stoves forged at Horseshoe, again a hundred years.
At late day the lake stills, and the hills on the far shore round themselves in the water.
We climb over rock moss and lichen, through fern stands and up the rain-slicked trail to the peak.
No longer could she live alone. As if dead, looking into a mirror with no face.
Star-spangle, woodsia, walking leaf, the ghosts of great blue heron.
What one of us lives through, each must, so that this, of which we are part, will know itself.
Here, where there was almost nothing, we waited in the birch-lit clouds, holding the uncertain hand of a lost spirit.
When my son was an infant we woke for his early feeding at
This one who had come toward me all my life now gazed at the skies above Montparnasse as if someone were there, gesturing to him from the slate light.
He looked at me and the asylum shimmered, assembled again into brick-light and wards of madness. Emptiness left my mother. The first love in field upon field.
The dolls were dolls, the curtain a curtain. The one in the grave said yes.
for Sean
The curfew was as long as anyone could remember
Certainty�s tent was pulled from its little stakes
It was better not to speak any language
There was a man cloaked in doves, there was chandelier music
The city, translucent, shattered but did not disappear
Between the no-longer and the still-to-come
The child asked if the bones in the wall
Belonged to the lights in the tunnel
Yes, I said, and the stars nailed shut his heaven
protected from the silence she slid she too into this loss of self that reaches its height
and is reversed in a clump of charred roses
What happened? His face was visible then not. Around him snow fell, but over him grass remained, wet and young and shaped like a coffin.
I laid her in the snow, she who I was, and walked away.
�The children had cocoa for breakfast, and milk with bread and jam at lunch. They took naps in the afternoon. They had a dog. At the end of the winter there was �no more snow.��
And the cries were those of gulls following a seed plough.
The people of this world are moving into the next, and with them their hours and the ink of their ability to make thought.
Particles of light have taken from them
Snow fell onto her coat and chewen gloves, at night like apple blossoms in tar, and my solace became that she would remain as she was.
When the house was alive, its walls recorded the rising and falling of the bed, as if a wind�
The hurrying-forth took with it
So why does it matter
His mother on the porch, dressing like a man even then, and the house in the photograph behind her in flames, mother and house.
Beneath the ice, open-eyed but absent, she who I was, with ribbon scars faint across her. Every tip of wheat-stalk lit by sun.
They took with them
He needed to feel as if he were going to die, many times to feel it, many hundreds of times.
It came along and passed beyond. Had I been. Were you not. Because I believed I was alone.
Until the derelict house offered its last apparition.
As a star plummets from darkness, a soul is exiled. Light, silk, the rope, black storms of dream.
That one day he was given a new mother, and it was she who starved them, she who sent them into the wood to cut the very switch�
So with the rope, as if he could replace the past. A child awakened by a whip. Until his narrow coffin and cup of sleep.
He was only a boy when the world darkened. But the switches were easy to find, so red in winter.
The house where one could dance without clothes imagined an invisible piano, stove mice, chimney swallows, a curtain, a cry.
What may have been the beginning of life after death.
In the open arms of a burnt wind he returned to me, barefoot by choice, bearing gingerbread, chocolate, quince jam, a bag of candy.
Look! Whole villages intact and shimmering. The very body itself begins to evanesce, it has not true boundary. Death changes it as a mirror changes a face.
Then he used the past to refer to the present.
Wings slap along the wall, and in the hardened owl dung, crickets glint. Dust settles on the house until entire sentences are written.
A window haunted by an open hand.
Over the writing table, an empty map: years to connect the little marks. In his closet among the linens his weapon of choice.
In answer to your question, no, he could not have done it. The rope was used for something else, worn from use, a cry a stiffening.
It was with this he untied himself again and again, in the bed and before the fire, blue-voiced and changed of face.
The house saw everything as does every house. Hollow walls, staircase, sorrowing ink. It was the last time.
They had been children in towns years apart, she who I was, and the man in the coroner�s arms.
Perhaps those born after the war are those whose lives the war took.
An abandoned house, after all, will soon give itself back, and its walls become as unreadable as symbols on silk.
With the departed, a sense of time, and sleep even sleep is taken, and the world appears as if it were�
Every spring I return to her, laying my thoughts to rest like a wreath on water.
These are the words no longer. Here are the photographs taken when we were alive.
In the blue silo of dawn, in earth-smoke and birch copse, where the river of hands meets the Elbe.
In the peace of your sleeping face,
We have our veiled memory of running from police dogs through a blossoming orchard, and another
Of not escaping them. That was � ago � (a lifetime), but now you are invisible in my arms, a soul
Acquiring speech, the body its blind light, whispering
We were
The black fire of ink on paper took hold of their souls � incorporeal fire.
There was no protection this fire couldn�t touch nor darkness nor a moment.
It lasted as long as a dream it was no dream. Heteroglossia of nervous shortwave, cloud of blown walls.
In the barracks, those who had sketched themselves in coal and smoke became coal and smoke.
And the living remained, linking unknown things to the known: residue, scapular, matchlight, name on a tongue.
Then, for an hour, the war slept, and rain filled the cisterns with silence.
Our windows faced east, and on August evenings, the sky was a blue no longer spoken.
Ash over conifers and birches, over berry thickets. Resembling snow and its synonyms. Silvered fields of millet.
A silence approaching bees of the invisible or the scent of mint.
One need not go further than a white towel hung in an open door.
into a light most unexpected the glass hives
executed labors whose writings in a darkness are lost
meanwhile they exhaust the city�s supplies
and live only in the midst however abundant
inaudible to them the murmur that comes to us
song of abundance psalms of grief
an entire absence of hesitation
whereby they break with the past as though with an enemy
it is not without prescience their summoning
as though nothing is happening will come back
to live as long as the world itself in those who come after
too vast to be seen too alien to be understood
prefers what is not yet visible to that which is
as a society organizes itself and rises so does a shrinkage enter
so crowded does the too prosperous city become
the era of revolutions may close and work become the barricade
suddenly abandoning generations to come
the abode of the future wrapped in a shroud
a door standing not now where once it stood
we are so made that nothing contents us
Begin again among the poorest, moments off, in another time and place.
Belongings gathered in the last hour, visible invisible:
Tin spoon, teacup, tremble of tray, carpet hanging from sorrow�s balcony.
Say goodbye to everything. With a wave of your hand, gesture to all you have known.
Begin with bread torn from bread, beans given to the hungriest, a carcass of flies.
Take the polished stillness from a locked church, prayer notes left between stones.
Answer them and hoist in your net voices from the troubled hours.
Sleep only when the least among them sleeps, and then only until the birds.
Make the flatbed truck your time and place. Make the least daily wage your value.
Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No one�s mouth.
Bring night to your imaginings. Bring the darkest passage of your holy book.
The recollections of a whole life, the consciousness of spiritual existence, and all which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, become brighter, even in opposition to extreme bodily languor. In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few, very few travelers have returned, and from which those few have brought back but vague remembrances; sometimes accompanied with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they had then some transient prospect. Here, amidst images, dim images, of solemnity or peace, of glory or of terror, the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye.
�did this happen? could it have happened?�
�everything ahead of her clear for the rest of her life�
�I try to keep from wanting the morphine. I pray with both hands.�
�Lima, Alpha, Uniform, November, Charlie, Hotel, Echo, November, Alpha, Bravo, Lima, Echo. Pap. Lima, Charlie, Alpha, Zero, One. Acknowledge. Out.�
�man and cart disappeared in the blast, but their shadows remained on the bridge�
�these diaries a form of weather�
(a future hinting at itself)
(all of this must remain)
(on illness, after radiation; a mysterious illness)
(something) whispering
(the sadness when a hand�)
��with the resistance of a corpse to the hands of the living�
�open the book of what happened�
a barnloft of horse dreams, with basin and bedclothes
a bit of polished quiet from a locked church
a black coat in smoke
a black map of clouds on a lake
a blackened book-leaf, straw and implements
a blue daybook hidden in my bed with his name
a branch weighted with pears
a brittle crack of dawnlight
a broken clock, a boy wakened by his father�s whip, then the world as if whorled into place �
a broken equation, a partita
a bullet clicking through her hair
a bullet-holed supper plate
a burnt room strewn with toy tanks
a century passing through it
a chaos of microphones
a city a thousand years
a city shaken and snowing
a coin of moonlight on the shattered place
a confusion of birds and fishes
a consciousness not within us
a corpse broken into many countries
a cup of sleep
a desire to live as long as the world itself
a door opening another door
a feather forced through black accordioned paper
a field of birds roasted by the heavens
a goodness that must forget itself
a grave strewn with slipper flowers
a groundskeeper�s knowledge of graves
a hole in light, an entrance
a horse grazing in an imaginary field
a horse of wire, wine-corks and wax
a horse tangled in its tether
a hotel haunted by a wedding dress
a house fallen in
a house fallen into itself
a house in time, years from the others, light-roofed, walls shimmering
a hurried life, a knife on newsprint
a lace of recent snow
a language known only to parrots
a life in which nothing is lived
a light,
a litany of broken but remembered events
a little hotel in the city with its windows open
a little invention for sweeping crumbs from the table
a locket�s parted lovers face to face
a man repainting his wooden house in stopped time
a man vanishing while he danced
a man who built cottages for tourists until he went blind
a memory through which one hasn�t lived
a message deflected by other messages
a message from a secret self
a mist of geese rising
a moment of bluesmoke
a moment of sycamores in low mist
a moon caught in the bare hold of firs
a moon haloed in high cirrus
a name which should not be written
a new world, entirely other
a no-longer-beyond
a parcel of copper wire, plastique and a clock
a parrot learning its language from a ghost
a past to come
a phrase shifting epochs
a pinch of salt, a fist of sugar
a plumbago curtain withdrawn from the radiance
a poplar in the sun, a pouch of coins, between layers of sleep where one lives another life beside this, awakening in the grave, brushing mother�s hair in the kitchen
a random life caught in a net of purpose
a record-keeper of human and earthly life
a rifle loaded with moments
a rivulet of sweat on the brow of the one keeping watch
a road erased by light
a road that ends nothing
a salvage yard of burnt office furniture and household goods
a scarf of smoke from a mouth
a schooner sailing in a bottle of light
a scriptorium
a search without hope for hope
a searchlight washing the fields
a secret that stands apart from every secret
a single turn, then years on the same road
a snow of ash risen from winter months
a spiral of being
a spirit gold-breathed, something not made only of
a stairwell spiraling
a stalled ambulance
a steep wooden staircase
a sudden reticence that seizes the heart
a syllable a dove
a taxi and three gunmen
a taxi its four doors open its lights out
a telephone ringing in an empty house
a ticking telex
a traffic jam of refugees on a desert road
a train rounding low sand hills
a veiled window a camera hidden in a loaf of bread
a veiled window where appears a revenant
a walnut box of world and light
a war-eyed woman
a wind of burnt documents borne by wind
a white rain, then your face becoming another�s
a white road
a white road billowing behind the relief trucks
a white road ending in one�s own life
a whitened eye clouded with gnats
a willow vase, more bedsheets flaring over the furniture
a wind lifting washed linen
a wind-flock of butterflies
a window of grilled hens
a wire fence woven with pine boughs
a woman in a blowing coat on the tarmac
a woman rubbing the mirror until she is gone
a woman sitting on a window ledge as if about to vanish
a word dissolved into the yet-again
a world set in language and deserted
a world thought into being
a wreath on water
a year passing through itself
a yellow mosaic of remains
above a pacific slumber of white houses
above a
absent in a garden of watered roses
acres of blue wind
after having gone all the way to the end
after his internment and before his suicide
again and again
against a sea of recriminations
against a winter pine, eating a sparrow
against this, that
air filled with ash, notebooks with sorrowing ink
airfield to airfield
algebraic music
all night the boats calling out
all of them,
all questioning to myself
alluvial plains
alpha rays of plutonium
although we are a small group on a private tour
America a warship on the horizon at morning
American university T-shirts among the executed
among white birch stands
an ache of such light
an ache of such light fixed in the bone
an anonymous work performed
an authorized death a non-authorized death
an inn for phantoms
an inner tact
an object that disappears from the word
an olive field of ordnance
an ossuary
an oven of birds
ancient light having reached us
and all questions, and all questions about questions
and among the stars, those too distant to be seen
and collective memory a dread of things to come
and for women who desire men
and have left undone
and in the dream
and in the villages laundry hanging for months
and in their eyes the years taken from them
and it is certain someone will be at that very moment pouring milk
and it is supposed that we are describing the world
and its corresponding moment in the past
and night, a knock at the window
and night, a storehouse
and on the battlefield, our anatomy lessons
and phrases like: vanishing pianos
and she body and promising light she exists
and silence the most mysterious form of affection
and standing in phosphorus rain, the man I have not yet married
and that another will be uttering its first human word
and the glass-winged bats hang in the darkness
and the gun though loud has not discharged
and the house? there. which became what it was because of us
and the marigold the flower of worry
and the shell etching a horizon into our window as it passed
and time, speeding as it departs
and we fell into each other laughing the laugh of the newly dead
and we, separated on earth by decades
and what intervened more, war or the passage of time?
and what of those who have made this same journey?
and whispering what could
and
ants in a city of peony
apparition in a vacant house
apple blossoms and wet wind
approaching the other with empty hands
aria in time of war
armfuls of furze, lupine, cornflower
as a flame is linked to its burning coal
as a mirror changes a face
as a rain, however brief, changes the world
as all afternoon the clouds float west to east, leaf-smoke and lake wind, pumice and plumbago gray, white-storeyed, rain-logged
as any backward look is fictive
as any conflagration or struggle is understood
as any new act inflicts its repetition
as crows mark the fog
as for children, so for the dead
as gloves into a grave
as God withdrawing so as to open an absence
as he appears and reappears in the unknown
as if a flock of geese were following
as if there were no other source of food
as if to say goodbye to his own mind
as if we had only one more hour
as if with the future we could replace the past
as in the childhood of terror and holiness
as light or the retreat of light
as memory, a futile attempt
as more beautiful than it had been because it is lost
as rain before it reaches us
as rain strikes the pails in our tents of wakefulness
as the fence has recorded the wind
as the water in which the corpse has been washed
as those who have returned have said
as though when past and present converge, there is a gap
as thought affects the universe in as yet immeasurable ways
as unexpected rain craters the fields
as when cicadas sing at the cenotaph
ascending to the stone-cool stars
ash manuscript, death aria, hunger fugue
ash sailing ashen wind
at once in this world and the world to come
at the city�s edge the aged cooling towers
at the edge of a forest once for making violins
at the end of their journey, the petals they carry vanish
at the end, where they carry his body
at the point where language stops
at the ticket window, and again in the fruit stalls, a kilo of open melon, in the train without stopping, rain of yellow tickets, broken turnstile
at writing�s border, as if memory were of everyone, forgetting no one, such a cold happiness!
awakening
back to the blowing-out of birthday candles
back to the crystal ring of a toast
back to the furl of his shirt in a hot wind
back to the razing of every edifice
bamboos bleached by light
bananas hacked clean on the stalk, tangerines pulled down with their leaves
bare trees in fog, umbrellas opening all at once
barefoot by choice in the thin sea, by choice wearing black cotton
bats hanging from the rafters, long polished corridors open
bats singing along walls
because we cannot emerge
beds in the great open-air sickbay
before and behind us
beings who have chosen one another
bell music rolling down the roofs
between here and here
between hidden points in the soul
between hidden points in the soul born from nothing
between saying and said
beyond what one has oneself done
birchbark curling from the birch limbs
birds dropping from flight leaving cries in the air
birds in the clerestory, a tapestry of broken light
biting hard the fear
black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill a sack
black fingernails, blue hands, lost hair
black storms of dream
blessed be
blood rose and love
blossoming poplars
blossoming walls, a grave digger�s tunic, a newspaper kiosk in rain
blossoms yet again inside us
blue lobelia rising along the gate
blue-leaved lilies
blue-winged roofs and rooflight
boat scraps washed leeward
bone child in the palm a bird in the heart
bone-clicking applause of the winter trees
bones of the unknown
bones smoothed by water
book of smoke, black soup
born with a map of calamity in her palm
both windows open to whatever may happen
bottled light tossed into the sea with no message
bring forth what is within
bring in your whispering harvest
broken clouds return from the past
broken space, ruined birds, death�s heaven
but in a change of worlds you weren�t you
by someone who
by the time we were face to face
by which
caged canaries before each shop as if the street were a mineshaft
capable of a fate other than its own
cathedral bells chiseling the winter air
cathedral of shivering light
certain of thought but not of what is seen
chandeliers in shellfire, chaotic light
charnel house of the innocents
checkpoints, roadblocks, barricades, points of entry
children shouting goodbye in a hot wind
christmas lights in smoke
city through the filth of a bus window
clouds of lake water, light and speech
clouds of road behind us
clouds returning to the sky from the past
cocoa, whistling pine, ceiba, ylang-ylang, rain
code for key turns
cognac steadying the night
cold fire-pit
cold stalks of daylily
come, love, through burning
composed of light
converging on my own life
cordite wind, one�s first cordite
corn black in the fields, crib smoke, bones, a rib cage
corrugated fields, sheep on the bare fields of drought
cotton mats spread on the floors of classrooms
countries erased from their maps
cratered memory cratered field
crows took rye scraps from her hands
curtains of rain opening
dark, borne within us
dead woman giving birth to rats
dear Fran�oise of bravery under fire
death is not the conclusion of earthly life
death is the descent of the one called
destroys what it briefly illuminates
detritus reaching through a window washed away by wind
difference which she is not to speak
digging a hole in the floor for no apparent reason
disquiet and the book of disquiet
dissolved into the yet-again
distance measured in space or time
do we
doors opening, stones humming the foretold
doves on the gray limbs of winter poplar
down a desert road aerially strafed
drawings doomed to be destroyed by bullets
dreaming nouns remembered until a window
dressed in their shrouds
drinking from cupped hands
dwelling in apartness
each a ring of soot
each day breaking along the cordillera, then broken
each page a window intact until touched
early summer�s green plums
earth singing in her magma chambers
easter lilies opening in
elegiac time
empty windows dipped in milk
even if by forgetting
even if he is thousands of miles away or dead
even the trembling of souls turning into light
every line in his face the river of a single year
except to be gentle with one who loved you mistakenly and very much
expectation, the presence of the not-yet-exiled from itself
filled with lifelong gratitude
fire of human becoming
fired from the tip of the only possible
fireflies above the graves, time collapsing, your name which should not have been in stone in stone
firing into the air five nights in the shelter
flags opening in wind
flatbread like a stack of plates on his arm
flocks of geese marching in formation down a dust road
flowering trees: trumpet, bottlebrush, cassia, frangipani, flame, sea grape
flowers rotting on mounds: air plant, allamanda, amaryllis, spider lily, bougainvillea, shellflower, hibiscus, ashanti blood, trumpet vines, oleander
for the rest of your life, search for them
for the words that would not come
forward to a rope from his arm to the post
forward to a wedding-cake knife in our hands
forward to the blindfold
forward to the list of demands
fountains of dust rising out of the hills
fragments from the Second Brandenburg
fresh wind in the linens
from a gloved hand a flaming bottle
from chance to chance, event to event
from earth to satellite, event to event
from our last train ride through the ricefields
from the cathedral comes
garbage fires along the picket lines
gasoline coupons and rations, an event no longer remote
Georg leaning against the winter pine eating a sparrow
ghost hands appearing in windows, rubbing them clear
God not a being but a force, and humans, the probative tip of that becoming
God withdrawn from the world
gourds, relief sacks loaded into trucks, poles, rags, tents
graves marked with scrap iron, a world in her dead eye
grief of leave-taking
ground fog rising from a graveyard
had gathered to die
had undergone subtle and perilous shiftings
half-tracks and yellow-eyed transports, and behind them a long road
happens when you say yes
happiness without fulfillment
having made herself stand she was at rest
he is from exile, which is in all of them
he listened to Schubert,
he saw nothing of what was to come
he told her how, in those years
he, though alive, was no longer
her amnesia an approach to understanding her life
her face the war years
her hair a banner of rain
her hands blue in the well
her wet skirt wrapping her legs
hills thinning at the world�s edge
his absence fills with passing clouds, the script of birds, and schoolchildren�s voices
his ashen hands having passed through the window of his truck
his can of dark tobacco, his yellow finch in a cage
his footsteps disappearing as he walked
his grave strewn with slipper flowers and sardine cans
his hands, detritus reaching through a window washed away
his words sparkling in the raw air
history branded with the mark of uncertainty
history decaying
history decaying into images
horse clearing an obstacle
horses, poppies, trees with trunks like sycamores and leaves like maples
hot, the hurry of stars
hour of no matins
how abandoned how left behind
how better to account for my life
how did this happen? how it always happens.
how it reads its past
how secretly you died for years, on behalf of all who wished for themselves a private death
how the soul becomes an inhabitant of flesh
I am here, blowing into my hands, you are in the other coffin
I lit a taper in the Cath�drale St-Just, a two-franc candle, birds flying in the dome
I remember standing next to his bed
I see myself in their brass coat-buttons but not in their eyes
I stand on the commode for a glimpse of it
I tried once. it was just before the war, and she had no time for me.
I was to bring him music for the left hand
if he exists to another, that is need
if rope were writing he would have hanged himself
if you ask him what happened he will tell you
in a bowl polished by the morning light
in a village where the women know how to piss standing up
in carceral silence
in glimpses, broken messages, cryptic signs
in his address book, a pressed poppy chosen from his mother�s poppy bed
in his coat, a small cage of canaries
in his hand a clod of himself to wipe on the walls
in memory: the music of an open spigot
in reverse until you were floating in a flat green boat
in solitary reverie we can tell ourselves everything
in stone is written
in the bardo of becoming
in the black daybreak, passing through
in the casket window, a face
in the cellar, three crates: rifles, gold & cognac
in the cesium fields
in the chaotic light in the coal-smoked heavens
in the cities of what can be said
in the country of advanced years
in the ecstasy of standing outside oneself
in the fact of parting
in the garden: heliotrope, phlox, rose trees, trellised roses, blue torenia, hibiscus, blue lobelia, lichen, a bamboo grove
in the garden in winter with my son
in the mathematical language of a time to come
in the morning, a white shirt on the line waving
in the night photograph: electric cities, burning forests
in the pole-and-rag tents
in the still-bandaged pines
in the summer, weeds took over the city: horse weeds known as railway weeds grew taller than people
in the surround of that word
in the time after
in the tin lamp�s punched light
in the toy store, a parcel of toys explodes
in the white infinity of mist
in the window a veil of winter
in their radiance a tub of dry milk
in this camp, how many refugees
in this the child�s blue hour
in thought, where they were lost
incapable of imagining annihilation
inhabiting a body to be abolished
into a duration deep within her
into the world, further illuminated by thought
is there anything else?
it appears to be an elegy, put into the mouth of a corpse
it became what it was because of us � in that sense
it is as if space were touching itself through us
it is more ominous than any oblivion, to see the world as it is
it is not possible to find you in death�s heaven
it is not raining in the catacombs
it is not you who will speak
it is the
it is the morning of the body�s empty soul
it is worse than memory
it ruins time, the chiasmus of hope
it was all over
it was all there, written in stone, a record of munitions
it was
it was gruel refused: blue wedges of bread, maggot soup, rice drippings
it was just before the second war, and she had no time for me
it was raining in the catacombs
it was the name of a time, and over there, a place
it was the simplest way to know one another
journey of two thousand kilometers
journey that will have no end
keeping a record of oneself
knowing oneself from within
lace patterned after frost flowers
language from chance to chance
languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
lifting the wounded
light and the reverse of light
light impaled on the peaks
light issuing from the wind�s open wounds
light mottling the forest floor, crows leaving one limb for another
light of cinder blocks, meal trays
light of inexhaustible light
lighted paper sacks sent downriver to console
like the handkerchief road
like the whispering in a convent garden
like tomb flowers, the ossuary�s skull works
lilac and globeflower, clouds islanding the tilled fields
linked as flame to burning coal, as one candle lighted from another
listening to the stove mice and chimney swallows
little rain holes where the bullets went, rains crater the field, raising each a ring of soot, striking the catch pails and stabbing the tarpaulin.
we live in fog tents, awake, whispering what could once be written on a sliver of rice
lost in paper, shellfire
lupine wind, lingering daylight
lute music written for severed hands
manuscripts in the cold part of the house
matchbooks flaring in a blank window
meaning did not survive that loss of sequence
memory does not interfere
memory the presence of the no-more
metal soup pots hung to dry, crazed porcelain basins
mirrors, vials, furnaces
moments of rain ascend in the manner of smoke
more ominous than any oblivion
mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears
mud from the bowels of the city
mud from the disheveled night
music loosening floor tiles, a moon washed in earthly light, the dawn sirens calling men to the mines
music of the hurrying fountains
must release the dead from bondage
must rise from the dead while we live
my dear, I think
my father crossed the field and stood
my hair a cold flag of rain
my hands coated with tomb dust
my mother�s hand broken by a fierce wind
my own: I was utterly there. and when I came back I was still there
naked beneath our names, thrown up by the wit-lost
near dawn, near the river wasn�t it? if one of us
near the lake, where the fireweed was
neither a soul nor a body
neither for us nor near itself
never repeating itself
new pasts, whole aeons are invented
night shift in the home for convalescents
nightshirt, razor strop, boot-heel
night-voiced viola
no breath of God, no words, and no possibility of restoration
no content may be secured from them
no one prayer resembling another
not a house but a stagnant hour
not blood, flesh and bread but an earthly ecstasy
not isolation but a lack of solitude
not wishing to know anything more about oneself
nothing as it was
nothing other than mind
nothing was exiled from itself
now and again like a voice grown suddenly tired
now on the plane in a white-out
objects [heavenly bodies]
old books snowing from our hands
older than clocks and porcelain, younger than rope
older than glass, younger than music
on each tip of grass a wet jewel
on her hand, a moment of ring-light
on the blanket then, government issue
on the fifty-fourth day, loss of sight and hearing
on the platform between trains, holding a bottle
on the shortwave, the high whine of the world�s signal
one for the other
one sees and is seen
one sees and is seen approaching the other with empty hands
one stands in line for butter
only the walls that did not face the blast remained white
open shell of heaven
or a failed letter
or that she would admonish me for the years of my silence
or when it first occurred to them to have graves with markers
our atelier of passing trains, citronella smoke, a veiled bed
our hymnic song against death
our most secret selves
past and present sliding into each other
pear trees espaliered along the walls
pen and ink across the boundaries
pink snow downwind of the test site
pinning their intentions to a saint�s dress
pitch smoke chalks the sky over the roof
present though most often invisible
question after question
rain falling into their open eyes
rain in the catacombs
raising each a ring of soot
redemption not an accounting or a debt
relief sacks loaded into trucks
relief tents until the horizon
remaining in fear of death but remaining
responsible beyond our intentions
resting language or language under surveillance
reverses itself as we read it
riddles the statues of martyrs and turns
rinses limbs then craters the field
rinses limbs then
rises as wet smoke
rising in bodily light
roads rivered with waste and a tea-colored rain
sacks of soy and manioc, dry milk, rice
scoop of earth: slivers of femur, metacarpals
searching for something one knows will not be found
set in language and deserted by God
she heard no one�s footsteps, then nothing
she holds lilacs to her face
she meets a man on the mule-steps who has been dead for months
she pulled the lilacs to herself
she puts the rice pot down in the snow
she sees nothing of what is to come
she went with him willingly and without knowing where she was, she saw the country very much as she would have had she walked through a film about herself
she within me
she would never again wander too far into the past
sheltering in the open
shore birds, smoke, the ferris wheel turning
signature by signature in triplicate, rice and dry milk
since last night on the bridge
six hours under fire along the road
six inches from my belly
sixteen clicks after the flag of fire
slow questioners, there was no place in the world for them
smacking the hands of children who miswrote
small talk like white smoke from kindling
snow clicking as it falls into itself, hushed, a little smoke crawling from a stovepipe, following the wind or rising straight, the village so quiet that one can hear the iced branches
snow in the shadow folds,
snow on the shoulders of the statuary
so as not to take a single word into my mouth
so as to be taken for refugees
so it appears as if it were what we wanted
so that the dead climb up out of the river to blacken its banks
so that the other comes back
so this is how the past begins�
so we walked, pretending our empty suitcases burdened us
some dance, one holds a dove aloft
some flaw in the message itself
some were burned with cigarettes, some doused with turpentine. every night they poured turpentine through their hair and slept like that, so as to keep the leeches from giving them head wounds
some with wicker baskets, others with gathered flax, some with children in their arms, others with brooms, some dance, others hold aloft a dove someone will be pouring milk while another perishes
something broken and personal, a memory
something holding back the pouring, a turn of the kaleidoscope, a turn again, radiant, beautiful, meaningless so it is easier to choose stones from the ground, a sack of words, pieces of language from something larger, and if a single event caused this ruin, what was that event? what made night a country of terror?
something within me is no longer with him
snow catching on razor wire, searchlit fields
snow through open windows
soul on its way toward earth
sparks of holiness
spoken in unknown words of a known language
stepping back into an earlier life
strands of hair, blood, corpuscled light
streets iced with shop-glass, a flock of stones
stripped trees against winter fields
take no words by mouth
tangled lilacs, peeling walls, darkening lindens
tedium taught me an imaginary world
that even this refuge might be taken:
that ing-ing of verbs in an eternal present
that light traveled from the eye to the world
that nothingness might not be there
that you might become one among others
the after-touching memory of relief
the air around the ringing bells filled with ash
the being that lies half open
the birds became smoke
the blue whorling that once spoke
the blue-stoned streets of river rock
the boiling, sudden clouds of August
the boundless etcetera of indifference
the breath of the invisible
the bridge that doesn�t touch the other bank
the buildings of the center city no longer
the candlelit stairwells in blackout
the cedared hills, smoking orchards, and the rivers of ill luck
the cemetery workman�s wheelbarrow
the chandelier of water against stone
the chorus of mules and roosters, goat bells, little cries
the cinema, trip-wired, the small-arms fire
the click, night
the click, night, pages turned by a wind and taken
the confessions written in gunpowder and spit
the danger of premature good conscience
the dawn sky at morning pearl and smoke, the trees stripped
the day has not yet come
the day will of all days be ordinary, its weather various
the dead were left among the living � there were no questions
the dead were washed and dressed and touched
the
the dreams are a coffin with an open window
the dreams of a mind in the grave
the early summer�s green plums
the empty wet shirts on the line waving
the endless, unbroken lines
the evacuation of ghosts
the flautist�s breath in a stairwell
the flumes of white phosphorus marking the city
the forbidden world hidden behind it
the four-a.m. bombing of a newspaper office
the fragility of social orders
the furthest edge
the future destroying us
the ganglia of a train map, metastasizing cities
the going-forth, the as-yet-cannot-be-heard
the greater and lesser wings the ground luminosity
the hand moving of its own accord across the page
the happy life life itself
the hidden world and its inhabitants
the hole of my mouth
the hole where my ancestor stands burning
the house, a white portrait of our having fled
the hushed chill of such a wind
the
the ice of reminiscence submerged in time
the immigrant disappearing into a new language
the informant�s diary of his whereabouts
the ivory of ice on the rivers
the japonica�s shadow on a telegraph pole
the life that would have ended then goes on
the light in these old photographs is a palm of rice
the light of a pocket mirror moving through trees
the little notebook of poems in the pocket of a corpse
the Lumi�re camera
the man tipping his hat sadly
the man tipping his hat sadly as if to say goodbye to his own mind
the mirror in her eyes giving himself back
the moon a bone-cap of ice or ivory
the moon in its clearing
the morning�s cold light on the blankets
the mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears
the name I am becoming
the nine lights of thought
the open well ending in its moon of water
the opening of time
the past is white near the sea
the past, which is our present
the peace of a black-windowed warehouse
the peace of the hay
the
the plummet of a star from its darkness
the question speaks
the rain falls lightly now
the rescuers lift from the wreckage a child no longer a child
the revenant whi
the roads issuing mist
the roads rivered with sewage and tea-colored rain
the roofs have fallen, field flowers grow in the rooms. nevermind
the same clicking of bare limbs in wind
the same rose sold to every mourner
the secret police having risen to the stature of petty thieves
the sedimentary years
the shacks of
the silence of a new language
the soft houses of heaven
the soldiers� moonlit helmets
the soul cannot leave the body of a suicide until she comes
the soul weighs twenty-six grams and is migratory like the birds
the soul, enamored of greatness
the soul with its sense of destination, the soul exiled, a stranger to earth
the space between events infinite
the stench of soap boiling at the edge of a village
the sting of bleached linen
the stony space where all of this happens
the stories nested, each opening to the next
the story of empty rice sacks
the street�s memory of abandoned shoes
the streets running with a sweet gray stench
the sun a monstrance
the sun moving toward
the sun will turn into a red giant, and then into a white dwarf
the sweet stench of gangrene, a cloud of flies, in its hand a child�s necropolis
the temptation of temptation
the three hidden lights beyond the grasp of thought
the tomb into which we escape
the trains. sometimes a silent coupling
the trees: almond, annatto, sweetsop, banana, monkey-bread, bay rum, sandal bead, breadfruit, yellowsilk, camphor, candle
the trees mortared into flower
the trembling of river stones, the ignition of spirit, the firing of human thought
the trip wire in white grass at one with the footfall, the latch
the truck-rutted fields the burnt sorrow
the twenty-two bones of the skull
the uncertain hand of a lost spirit
the vanished present visible on earth
the wall of white sand and poisonous mill wastes
the way one could bathe while still covered by a square of cloth
the wet paper of flesh draped on brittle bone
the what is? gives the wrong answer
the what is? has ruined thought
the white train
the white-boned noon
the window covered with a wool blanket
the woman in the flowered robe mad with fear
the woman in your arms a lighted bedcloth
the world an accident
the world as it emerges
the world�s ensouling in a gallery of sadness
their bedclothes soaked in music
their bruises, aubergine
their refusal to accompany us further
their souls exist as their body
their souls shuttered against hope
then at dawn through the cedars
then for an hour we slip photographs from their frames, strip the walls, toss what had been our life into shipping crates
then phosphorus fell silver on the city and rained on the lettuce fields
there is a reason you have lost him. for the rest of your life you could search for it
there is no absence that cannot be replaced
there is no reason for the world
there was black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill the sack
there was no
there was nothing that wasn�t for sale
these are my contents
these paving stones this hymnal
these ruins are to the future what the past is to us
they bind them in rags
they climb out of the river and blacken its banks
they died along with anyone who knew who they were
they fell from heaven to earth
they go on past grief and give me a sack of beans
they lived in the carcass of the sports coliseum
they looked into the camera, into the future
they will gladly go to the precipice, but where is the precipice?
thinking
this end and the beginning within it
this is a
this is a transit camp, a squatters� camp
this is how things were for us then
this is the city. this is a photograph of the city
this is the city. this was the city
this only death can write
this open-air asylum
this ossuary of world, what is the phrase for it?
this reversal
this shattering of indifference
this sudden incipience of event�
those things are obvious which are invisible
those who have entered and have left unharmed
thoughts turned back into ink and paper
throwing light upon light
time��a severe border guard��becomes imaginary
time lapsed in one country is only beginning in another
time, to which we are exiled
to abandon yearning for the body
to be unquiet
to be visible to oneself
to become endlessly what one has been
to cross the field without breaking the snow
to enter into itself and to stay awake
to expose ourselves to whatever may happen
to forget once having known it
to hide, safeguard, entrust to a protected place
to know not only what is, but the other of what is
to know that the great bell is the great bell
to remain haunted
to rescue the future
to say nothing without confining ourselves to silence
to search like a sheep for salt
to see other than from without
to see the world as it actually is
to walk the quays among the executed
to where a drawn lamb is hanging beheaded
today the world is stiff and locked in place, pines still, skies droning, snow mounded, and everyone has gone �to work�
together into the blue but unbroken perishing
too many bones in too small a soul
torn curtain, shutters in wind
toward what end? what uniformity?
tunneling between worlds
twirling organdy dresses waving goodbye
two children in his arms
two discontinuous realms
under the blind sky�s surveillance
under the whip, invisible, in the not-there
under what conditions can we speak of
unspeakable in language
unspoken thoughts, leaving us in their proximity, alone
until dawn in the fire tower
until this, that
visible only to God
walking the streets, tented in bedclothes
war-eyed in the warehouse of history
war
warning us of its nature and our own
washing its windows until they vanish
watch them appear to recede: what are we seeing?
water calm to the wind line
water rosy with iron
waters filled with human belief
watery cathedral, a gold wash of light, a trembling�
we are as paper against the walls of the passage
we caused each other
we drove through disappearing villages
we hid among tangerine peels, lamb bones and blue figs
we lived in tents of fog
we returned to the border and walked toward the checkpoint
we take our
we take our worldly goods, your hand, mine, and the clocks spin
we were spoken into being
were we not?
wet bouquets at the kiosk
wet paper of our flesh
what crawled out of the autumn wood was dementia
what did we retrieve? empty spectacles?
what do these questions ask?
what do we have to forget?
what end? what uniformity?
what fragmentary light?
what God does or does not forgive
what is closest to us
what sees us without being seen
what waking life is to the dream
what was before, imperfectly erased
what were we doing as far away as this?
what you see is the beginning of life after death
what you see you shall become
when did we know?
when I opened the door
when it was possible to walk across the river
when one could hear, behind the curtain, the whole thing
when the thing had gone beyond the limits of a room
when this sunlight reaches the future
when time seems to us a
when we wake from our deaths
when you know the worst, you can return to cut stalks of iris in April
where at least one loveliness wanders
where else would they have fallen?
where everything destroyed was left intact
where he looked
where the helicopters landed, lifting trees from the ground
where the ore is crushed into yellowcake
where the sickness knew us
where there is some message to convey
where they go without sleep
where thinking takes place we have a right to say
while I lived in that other world, years went by in this one
while out on the cobalt sea the ship turns toward us
while we watched transfixed the repetitive novelty of death
who cries for the jasmin as he digs them up, and carries with him a can of black tobacco and a yellow finch in a cage
who if rope were writing would have hung himself
who in mirrors saw a strange woman
who no longer realized I was there
who returns from the journey with her eyes ruined
who wanted only to retrieve a few invisible souvenirs:
who wrote on the window in lipstick
whose white hands lift from this river the sudden flight of cranes
why do I seem no longer alive?
wide-planed wind of the sea
wild doves in a warehouse
wind etching the walls
wind singing in the chimney
windows X�d against fire
windshield wipers clearing a wedge of water
wisteria floating along the fence
with a camera hidden in a loaf of bread
with empty suitcases, pretending to be refugees
with how much uncertainty they told it
with revolutionary hope we searched, believing
with the flurry of a dovecote
without passing through thought
without personal history or desire for selfhood
without so much as a biscuit tin of water
without wandering too far into the past
woman in black holding daisies in paper
woman in mourning black with baskets of lemons and eggs
wood crates of cognac and ordnance
wooden crosses in snow
words burning in the windows
words carried by countless mouths
work shoes, soda cans, holy braided palm
world without having been
world without origin
would return to the point of departure
would reveal itself as other than chance
writing, an anguished wind
written over an open grave
yet the women dancing with white scarves
yet the women veiled in cirrus
you are the ghost through whom we see the wall
you come to earth in your sorrows
you, leaping tall fields, cornflower and milk
you might be the revenant of the earliest years, you might be within
you must leave, you cannot remain here, you must leave at once
you spit out your teeth, give it up
you will see the generation into which you should have been born
your churches will warehouse weapons and wheat
your freedom is an abyss
your hand awkward between us in the absence of love
your heart in the guise of mysterious words
your light narrow coffin
your mother waving goodbye in the flames
your notebooks, the sorrow of ink
your things have been taken
your things have been taken away
zero
from the quarry of souls they come into being
supernal lights, concealed light, that which has no end
that which thought cannot attain
the going-forth, the
��as a flame is linked to its burning coal
to know not only what is, but the other of what is
�Blue Hour� When my son was an infant in Paris, we woke together in the light the French call
��John Cage to Oskar Fischinger, 1984
�In the Exclusion Zones� refers to the thirty-kilometer radius of contaminated lands immediately surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
�Hive� is after Maurice Maeterlinck.
�On Earth� was written during the spring of 2001.
Gnostic abecedarian hymns date from the third century A.D. Along with Christian and Buddhist texts, they were recovered from small towns on the northern fringe of the Taklamakan Desert early in the twentieth century. The texts were written in seventeen languages, including Sogdian and Tocharian, as well as Aramaic and the �Estrangelo script,� a script for Syriac.
��Lucretius,
��Maurice Blanchot
��Gaston Bachelard
��Ren� Char
��Emmanuel Levinas
��Julia Kristeva
��Arthur Rimbaud
��Vedic mantra
��Ren� Char
��attributed to Robert Desnos
��Walter Benjamin
��after the painter Ashley Ashford-Brown, of Ivry-sur-Seine
��Edmond Jab�s
zero: also the �pure zero� of C. S. Peirce�s semiotic metaphysics
With gratitude to my editor, Terry Karten; my literary agent, Virginia Barber; the poets Frank Bidart, Robert Creeley, Barbara Cully, Forrest Gander, Louise Gl�ck, Lise Goett, Ellen Hinsey, Fanny Howe, Ilya Kaminsky, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Honor Moore, Michael Palmer, Robert Pinsky, Lloyd Schwartz, C. D. Wright; and, as ever, my friend Svetozar Daniel Simko and my dear husband, Harry Mattison, for readings of this work during its making.
I am deeply grateful to J. Patrick Lannan and Lannan Foundation for the support that made this book possible, and also to Robert and Peggy Boyers, editors of