Or to Begin Again (4 page)

But given the impermanence of birds,
the cardinal's nest on the deck,

 

 

given the domestic and the spiritual
the utilitarian and

 

 

the forgotten, given
these cold mercurial shapes, arbitrary

 

 

hinges, islands, perpetual desires
and their advocacy among the least entitled,

 

 

given that one falls in love
with the condition of hope

 

 

and falls out of love with its
cruel replacement, hope,

 

 

so that what is valued is not the same
and the shape of the body in the window

 

 

is foreign, the picture of the woman,
her body and face

 

 

at odds with their person, at odds with her
curiosity, her pertinence.

 

 

In a dream of the girl and the lover,
now forgotten as the day, inevitably, is forgotten,

 

 

there is a difference between being forgotten
and being among the dead, but

 

 

given these episodes,
their proof turns to night and stone.

The ears are ordinary, the feet
distorted. The girl has a condition

 

 

not announced in the greenroom
but nevertheless leaked to the press.

 

 

Biography has its compulsions, its regrets.
It could be the materiality of opaque gold

 

 

and the severity of promises,
their promiscuous gift,

 

 

oaths made on pillows between lovers.
There, in the eventide,

 

 

a strangling usurps the petty comma,
staggers from rejection to confirmation to murder

 

 

institutionally foretold. O Francis!
Do you stand for the cold, the cruel,

 

 

the bargain between such desire and such trust?
Take no prisoners. Let the homily endure.

 

 

The holidays are adept at the spectacle of divorce.
They specialize in silence, gala silence.

 

 

Masterpieces of the still life
make their way onto tables of the celebrants.

 

 

Holy! Holy! Holy!
intones the priest.
Things are given and taken away.

Here is a token of my affection.
Here is my child.

Turning the figure away, removing it
leaves its replica shadow

 

 

to shift with the gloating wind.
Later, the sculptor

 

 

pieces together poor bits of fabric,
copies from memory the shape of the lips.

 

 

The original remains vocable,
escaping the dream's

 

 

unscripted solitude, conceiving night's
blind, its familiar embrace.

 

 

Francis is silent. He has taken a vow.
Suffering unfurls its performance,

 

 

elicits revenge. On a ladder,
the man turns to address the public.

 

 

He imagines strangling the woman.
He speaks of his future in a nest.

Disturbed over her marvel I heard her say
something nocturnal I saw
mystery as merely change I saw
envy and the illegitimate mile I saw
under the formal atrocity at the messy embankment
all these and vocabulary lagging behind its science
tramp unknown soldier cop
talking strange talk
under an altered light under daze
I heard her say
tomorrow
as if she knew
I heard her say
come back
and I choose you
as analogue of the yet to be.
Do not foreclose
investigation, but come along.
I will try not to protract my look into
now I will continue as if
you were next if you will I heard a man say
on the radio the other day, well, yesterday
talking about headaches
if you will
and today I had a look at
a Chinese cabinet only it is not clear
it is Chinese it
may be from another country I took
measurements nevertheless
for my next life I am thinking of requesting librarian
although I am as yet not on a list
of possible survivors I am

thinking of erasing the word
sorrow
from
the world, hurting under an illusory pennant
master of ceremonies hidden behind its junk
I am thinking of coming back as
part of your coat as a tree is part wind.

Back from the thunderous
geist
bills to pay, grass to cut, fish to fry.
The spectacle of tasks
importuning, scenes
folded under scaffolds of lore.

 

 

Figures move

 

 

collapse of particulars
reformation borrowed from chapter
and force.

Morning cycles across night.
Almost enchanted by the light, almost annulled.
Were this the great bearing, were this merely
intrigue, or the architect's
confidence in the small shop of curiosities,
were the bride less stymied
in her great dress,
were any of these accountable
to the surge of one thing, one thing, one thing,
addition in space, bridge after bridge, and
the known but not recalled,
its bitter appraisal, singular
as the image of a girl,
long hair down over a shirt,
intent to be seeing, to be present,
she, the girl, long hair, open shirt,
writing something else.

Breathe deeply. Exhale whim. Exhale truce.
Can there be history?
Is it there, behind us in the park, Peter on a horse?
Is it in that cathedral, among the quick flames?
In Akhmatova's kitchen? In Mandelstam's death?
Can the Real return as history?
Ruin floods into images of new ruin and disappears.
Again!
cries the child,
Again!
Once upon a time.

Down, down, down. Would the fall
never
come to an end?

—LEWIS CARROLL,
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Alice was beginning to get tired
sitting
with spring rain
on the bank
in forgetful snow. She thought,
It is too dark to see anything.
Then she began to wonder
about the meaning of anything
and the meaning of nothing
and in what ways
any
and
no
were alike.
She said to herself,
I cannot see anything
and then
, I can see nothing
and thought they amounted to the same thing
and wondered
why two ways of saying the same thing
were needed.
If only,
she began, and fell
asleep.

It is soiled, possibly bloody, the dark.
At night there are cries
of the suddenly dying: a rabbit, a hen.
The fox went out on a chilly night.
He prayed for the moon to give him light.
The tune leaked into the air like ink
into paper. In her dream, Alice
is falling downstairs
into a tub of words.

 

 

The thing is pushed
forward. It is cold, nonsymbolic.
So, nameless as, say, animals are.
Unless.
These stray
unlessnesses
avert attention. They
give solace to it.
But it remains, a nameless thing
cordoned into consciousness
as if
being could withstand it.

 

 

The nomenclature of the
not living is
an it.
It,
said the soldier, torturing his captive,
it it it.
So let us have the White Rabbit.
Let us have this hurrying near.
Let us, among the
constancy
of living
and its
images
begin.

I am broke! says the White Rabbit, hurrying to the
bank.
The White Rabbit, in the red,
has no redress.
Naked as a jaybird, the White Rabbit lamented, soon to be a jailbird.

 

 

But what is the color of chaos? Alice suddenly asked.
Gray, the White Rabbit replied, looking up at the sky,
like a sock.
But there are always two socks, and only one chaos, Alice said.
Colors and numbers are not of the same kind, answered the Rabbit
somewhat impatiently, almost knowingly.

 

 

How did you find a gray sock in the sky? Alice continued.
The cloud's contour, don't you see?
No, Alice replied. I see only a gray cloud, I do not see a sock.
But then, she added, perhaps I live in a gray sock, perhaps this hole is a
sock into which I have fallen.
The White Rabbit disappeared as Alice was considering this possibility,
so she was left without a rejoinder, in the solitude of conjecture.

 

 

Alice thinks something about eliminating the desire for revenge.

 

 

Alice was caught in the radiance of the not yet knowable.
This, she thinks, drifting, must be
the feeling of being young.
She could not say
in the radiance of the not yet knowable
which seemed, now, a reason for youthful sorrow.

Why do shadows get longer? Alice asked no one in particular. It must
have to do with the angle of light, she answered herself, but this answer
did not make her feel confident. The question lingered anyway and
was added to by another. Does everyone know how to tell the difference
between a shadow and a thing? The thin trunks of the trees had bent and
crossed over the path.
Could one climb a shadow? she wondered.
Some can, came the answer out of the evening.
Who are you?
Who or what? came the answer.
Don't answer a question with another question, Alice said crossly.
Why not?
It isn't right, she said, not knowing why not.
A right angle, commented the Voice.
A right angel? Alice couldn't quite hear.
Yes, a right angel is something that can climb a shadow.
At that moment the shadows of the trees disappeared.
Alice continued down the path. She said the word
path
aloud.