This blog seems to be difting towards being a poetry blog. If I knew myself a bit better this would not be surprizing, as poetry has long been an important part of how I learn. I have also reengaged with writing over the past few years, part of my response to being in a new situation, living in Boston and working in Cambridge MA with an interesting and engaged group of people. At the same time, some of my children's friends engaged in writing as well, and I have been able to learn a lot observing this.
A few weeks ago I was doing some work in the basement of our old Vancouver house (the house is 100 years old in 2010) and I can across a box of old manuscripts. One of these was a poem sequence Calls This that I wrote while in Tokyo in the mid 1980s. It was published in 1987 as issue 24 of Peter Ganick's magazine Abacus.
Rereading these poems after a long absence they still, surprizingly, work for me. Some of the language is a bit sentimental and naive, but I am still obssessed with many of these themes - voicing, silence, faltering communication, observing the other ... I may try to rewrite this sequence next year. As part of the rewriting, I want to share it here.
Calls This (1987 Version)
Water not the same
not of me
nor yet given completely
to its other
The water’s other self
(its surface) blind to chance
will not accept refusal
but shares its qualities completely
A quality of self
as fluid as
its source
Completes all chances
equally alike
like death the water
bland to taste
that what I said was, and after
you took that from me
and went away.
part of the sky found
without light
and less distance
to believe in.
I followed anyway,
wanting to find
a way in then.
some fault in your voice,
a high note after rain,
that would let me remember,
escape,
all I had said.
like that dead chip
off the sky
you had kissed
then brushed away
in the silk
of your desire.
but what I said was
always held
and now
there is no way back.
for after
when after your looking
you paused
covering your eyes
there was
this again
this again after
the darkness passed
in pieces
broken from rain
the ability to place
mine in this
you the place of
a dry sound
part in sedge
the trembling
again
time for speech
I not kept
to this loss of air
or
a gesture might
given
have been offered
like the present.
I, offered
a way past this
or testimony.
and taken, swallow.
eat. that too
is done.
the offer allowed
for appraisal
like some of us
imagined hope –
the will to drive back
necessary failure.
the taken places
present.
this sembles a fictional
------------------------------------- gift to this
dry stick in the mud
want holds a sacrifice
of part’s integrity
to a lesser whole
(a measuring
Against itself)
and what you want
you take
of what you need
you give but part
is isolate
and draw a thread of cotton
from your nose
down through the anus
made whole the measure
of your need
innocence or incoherence in the attempt,
I have a shelter.
The air too thin
To carry sound.
I’d not intended that.
a person placed
above me on the stair
has fallen, damaging his throat.
I call,
I call his loss
towards me
for the words it gives
he does not close his eyes.
nothing to hear,
the air is farther from our want
than we can give.
what I want from him
what he needs
the blood between us
innocent.
here is enough.
this a flatter part
of what is called,
not the suggestion,
endurance,
to what is borne.
what is part of a place
when that
cannot
be found.
ever found.
there was a sense
that here,
but enough was taken.
the soil
thinned
till duration.
like the film of your face
after death
is
mine again.
possession a last
part of place
belonging
for what is not.
I cannot speak
and say less
but there is no protection,
those who love me
repeat my failing.
injured figures
beckoning
across the pale,
the order of words
fixed
in the moment of light
and we are caught.
no accusal taken.
the white
impartial
gives nothing of itself
‘I love you”
fulfills our possibilities,
and you and you.
are taken from me.
what I would say
not say
that I might give to you
light no longer to the room
what thought was once to the skin,
the table bare apart from its utensils
resting
still water in a glass
sleeping
our skin marred with images –
like naming flowers in the darkness,
their scent
remembering weight.
a knife a heirloom a fork
arranged,
always arguing
balancing
water in the glass.
‘keep the light off’
broken,
there are enough names.
‘enough’ I said ‘I’ve had
enough’
‘it’s the pressure in air
causes silver to tarnish’
eventually even bone decays.
its fine edge of water
against roses?
(after Satie)
if a square of light on the page
is called yellow
what is blue?
or not blue
but refraction at the boundary.
a place to breathe.
the yellow square cut out
and glued to the sky
Denies its brilliance
while blue remains on the table
modulating
into black (or one of its sisters).
never enough light
in the room or vanishing sky
as dinner ends
to forgive the blue or make it
speak for itself.
a tinkle of cutlery against china.
I would allow the blue its yellow
with the tea.
the yellow speaks of black
but is this memory
or prophecy
(as sky is liable to).
the sky is yellow.
the sky black.
blue a variation on black played after
our melody is complete.
or in some place lost
between dinner and sleep.
an interval held
too long between breath
the intention to speak
your breath on my throat
or water in a glass
remain
part of what I know
the blood
quieter than water
the first sound
slips from your throat
onto my tongue
like a perch
unconscious in
the air we speak
I swallow the sound
of your refusal
and breath
draws blood
from my tongue
the interval
in our bodies
aged with water
a fish
gelid in the stream
would speak
may have this light
or other
shadow in it
shape of a hand’s
grey drift
a small room
without windows
clasping the shadow
of a hand
fixed on the wall.
searching the shape
of a door
some flaw in the light
as distance
in time
of a room’s shadow
edges into decay
a slip
in the shadowed light
like memory
of a door
the hand of memory
of past light
so severe
it blanketed distinction.
the occasional need
to accept disturbance
into one’s breath
and grasp a fragment
of the day.
the day a fragment of the self,
its broken mirror
of the other’s desire
for self
without its other.
and breath never alone.
always
as it is
filling
into a sky
the other, breath’s absence:
flight
allows the I
trilling
its right of refusal
to pass into pieces of sky
like cloud.
as cloud sky’s breath
the trill breath’s tool
to embroider absence
with intent.
and pass
in spaces of a day
the air drifts free.
that too and
something less
listening
a reed bunting
too far off
listening to
the to
gaps
is there
water by water.
the bunting pauses
closer
pausing
repeats its
call its
flighting
are
there are
threads of reed
bunting its nest.
listening to
water
trip
drop by
again
the other day
today like
wisps of
nimbus of
the sky
to close
give
a reed bunting
by water
that too
and
you to
listening.
