Poemunity — your poem community

1 Taking advantage of the relationships and interaction, which actually exist between what happens to her and her desire, she creates some metaphors both obvious and opaque, as screens of rays crisscrossing the landscape in which herself and what she expected from you in the way of support coincide, so that I and you resemble each other, now. The way they light the land like infrared without a trace on film, really, part of your image was linked so closely to my desire, it remained inside my body. It never reached the emotions, which tend to damage the body, but which memory requires. Thus a formal device was discovered for detailing information that was intimate and largely unacceptable to what I thought I required from you, regarding beauty in idea and form. She expected distress to automatically bring about this beauty, like a woman’s theft of fire rope from your house, but not her hanging in the orchard by the house. She was a stranger to you. She was never in your consciousness. Hence she was never forgotten. She is in you the way direct experience generates consciousness, adding the energy of its materialization. To live another person’s biography is not the same as to live his or her life. She constructs a story line or cluster of anecdotal details, like clothes around the body, instruments of both defense and expansion, which give meaning to fluctuations, such as in pleasures occurring between herself and you. Her sunglasses swathed in feathers express the contingency of a light and a space, so that the anecdote of a hanging could be utilized as colorist or combinatory data, instead of her instinct for the imaginary in which what she imagines represents what happens, whether or not it misrepresents it. Sometimes it happens during a routine she represents by evenness of light on the land or when things usually mean nothing, like harmony in light, what happens and something to mean join accidentally. The thing isn’t what it is, but it is like what it is. Like a fake, it doesn’t mean anything, although there is something to mean, so that her solitude is the guise of unending repetition of a hanging or her relationship with you, in which all that is to be included will find a place. This is empathy or sharing her intuition with her. You look into someone’s eyes as if you were seeing through the face. 2 Because it’s not possible to absorb more than one insight at a time, there seems to be a contradiction between the visual or space, and the context or meaning. She felt deep uneasiness with the image of this sunset of unnatural energy, its sinister expression of an order of impossible beauty we thought we lost, accounting for the intensity of yellow light on the hill, which is not a thing,and it is not a metaphor, the way your life is not a metaphor to her, or the way intense light on the hill is a recollection en plein air, in the sense that it happened. Soon the background turns gray and the hill regains its natural color, but there are three dimensions of gray. This is a metaphor for the fact that the hanged woman actually made contact with you, although you never knew her. There is a link with her appearance, as with sex, or the way a name is attached to something after naming it, by the occurrence of its name, in this case linking with the appearances or biographies of a whole parade of lovers, so what she thinks of as human help from him is no longer dependent on changing her desire for him in the present, but is a substitute for it. The landscape is empty and it is immanent. The context of the woman in its reality may differ from the context in which the viewer thinks about her, the element of transparency. The way the viewer thinks about her is the way low clouds extend a landscape. The viewer is acting on the landscape in consideration that the context of the viewer distinct from the context of general human help could be a metaphor for itself. There were yellow-leaved trees behind a screen of green ones at the edge of the orchard. They are not a border between organization and decay of autumn trees, which are organized. The yellow leaves around your feet have an impossible beauty that was achieved and then lost. A way you can define a woman is to remember everything the woman is not. If you move your head fast enough, you can all of a sudden discern the whole structure of the surface of each leaf, and it links in your stomach, as with sex. If you remember not desiring her fast enough, you can all of a sudden discern her whole body. You can feel in your stomach the way any moment that happened and in which you think about her goes a long way toward convincing you of the autonomy and pre-existence of her form. 3 Her concentration became a direct experience of his life, an erotic concentration. Her biography of her persistently locates the point of impact of one’s own system of representations, insofar as vision itself is a representative operating on what she sees, and for which a particular light can represent an initial condition. Even the slightest movement of a hand or a finger is controlled and emphasized as by a spotlight of this sensitiveness, the way repetition is a cessation of the potential for conscious experience, or death, visiting the same places during the same seasons, at almost the same hour, so that landscape could be a simple repetition, which thrives on reproduction, in order to resolve what is happening into its own combination or name of words in the form of its time, and in order to defer the story. In a way, her memory is a theory about how the hanged woman looked to her in the orchard, which she has to respect, in the sense that the landscape’s immanence is an organically developing failure of its language to speak its content. The connection between word and idea corresponding to the landscape is retained, but the connection between the word and the landscape is lost, so the shadow of a hill stays dark during lightning. How she sees the lightning is a time lapse into the planar dimension, a hierarchy of grammar or deference by way of the word belonging to her such as lady suicide or woman suicide, because the woman doesn’t die in her own absence or in effigy, so that no existing philosophy and no philosopher will know soon, enough points with enough speed to handle the richness of her reconstruction of her or him for long. He starts to see patterns in the words and the patterns are pretty to him and distract him. It is well known that lightning is attracted to body heat, a person on horseback or a large saguaro, the way a racket of birds in the morning is a kind of empathy for two people. If we retain the belief that her image of him or her, let’s say him, is a pre-requisite for gaining consciousness of the unknown person, we suppose there is no direct channel of communication to the unknown person, with the result that facts about him or her must exit into the world, before a life can be perceived between the light and dark of function or the object, and desire or the image. At any time one can turn into its opposite, like desire or a screen, and the object or her story and him, who does not so much convey an image as a background to the biography. So, he says, she must emphasize references and conditions of her own life over its memories, or what she sees of the landscape by the manner of its illumination, unless she says it is illuminated within the arms of a great cottonwood, yellow or green, a faith of imaginary or real connotation repeating itself from him, like alternating current or radioactive dirt being turned up that registers on her without marking her. 4 Her persistent observation, even after the frost, is of each leaf coinciding with its luminousness, because of its structure as a lighted space and which shows brightness in idea and form, so you have to maintain your own consciousness in order not to be unconscious with me. Even if we can uniquely bridge the gap between the fact of a frost and the value of luminousness, and even though these intrinsic properties of the plant may not be what it feels. What it feels may be a space with pillars, so with light the space extends, as in what you believe to live with. A belief is a word-like object. You can focus your attention on it down to a point, like desire or memory of a strong feeling. You have a certain amount of control over your feeling about general human help by changing what you believe, which embodies the memories your speech is empowered to represent, she says. Space is material, but seems to open up a beyond, which is thought to defy material in its failure to speak its content. It still cues this content by links or desires, as to a form of physical appearance. To the extent that she can reconstruct a context or pornography in her body suitable for a hanged woman, a contingency is beaten back, critically. In the sense that events happening at the same time are meaningful, but not connected, there are events which mean nothing, though there is something to mean. This is an easy way to expect with desire from moment to moment, while the woman was hanging herself, as if consistency and the quest for certainty were not emotional, as when a person begins telling a story, leaves move. He believed that when a life is valuable, there is further value when it is responded to as valuable, but this could occur through evaluative judgement, without his attendant emotion. The product is in one case consistent manners, in the other, beautiful manners.

Is this mountain all rock, or are there any villages on it? These are some of the things I said to her. We bake because it is a way of overcoming. In the journey of zest, I see myself. On the news every day people are standing up screaming or lying down screaming while others remain calm. She pointed out that I had not made eye contact with her at all. Then I cried properly in a short burst. This is the worst example of any circumstance ever, noted a journalist in his notebook. Let butter and chocolate be a wish not to die! I implored the bain-marie. She likened me to a sieve. I clutch all my poems to my chest and count them again and again. I am kneeling like a small dog. What’s going on with this modern world and the right wife not even knowing what the left wife is doing? Now all you have to do is cut off the legs. After an absence, after a hard task, after the way the hand turns, like this — There was so much I couldn’t contain. She asked me how I was feeling in my body at this moment; I said tense in my whole trunk area. A strong smell of white wine. She said it came from an impulse that she often used to have when she first started practicing. She said she believed feelings are held in the body. She asked me what was going on with my breath and I realized I was sort of holding it. Like the boxes in the cupboard. “Enough” can get bigger. How much bigger, though? When I say I’ve had enough, how will you know when to stop?

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briars if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day. The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain. Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long. The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die—but we?" And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead. Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end—but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter We shall sleep. Here death may deal not again for ever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea. Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away! This way, this way! Call her once before you go— Call once yet! In a voice that she will know: "Margaret! Margaret!" Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear; Children's voices, wild with pain— Surely she will come again! Call her once and come away; This way, this way! "Mother dear, we cannot stay! The wild white horses foam and fret." Margaret! Margaret! Come, dear children, come away down; Call no more! One last look at the white-wall'd town And the little grey church on the windy shore, Then come down! She will not come though you call all day; Come away, come away! Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell, The far-off sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round, Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me, On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee. She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea; She said: "I must go, to my kinsfolk pray In the little grey church on the shore to-day. 'T will be Easter-time in the world—ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee." I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves; Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!" She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say; Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, To the little grey church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here! Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book! Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more! Come away, come down, call no more! Down, down, down! Down to the depths of the sea! She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy! For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; For the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun!" And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea; And her eyes are set in a stare; And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye, And a heart sorrow-laden, A long, long sigh; For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden And the gleam of her golden hair. Come away, away children Come children, come down! The hoarse wind blows coldly; Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door; She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing: "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she! And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea." But, children, at midnight, When soft the winds blow, When clear falls the moonlight, When spring-tides are low; When sweet airs come seaward From heaths starr'd with broom, And high rocks throw mildly On the blanch'd sands a gloom; Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hill-side— And then come back down. Singing: "There dwells a loved one, But cruel is she! She left lonely for ever The kings of the sea."

From the weathered boards knots pop like the eyes of potatoes. From brick salients not a clink of a pupil in a loop- hole. Cannon, yes, but without their kick. Ironically or entirely appropriately, who can say, the Fort will not admit us. The reenactors are going home; we see them retreat, backs x’d with sus- penders, toward the forest housecleaned into state park. Ocean beyond the ramparts suggests that stem-celled seconds fiend- ishly agglomerate with fits and starts into unprecedented forms. And so who cares that a fort’s built on a sand bar, that we don’t make it in, and go only so far round the perimeter.

The wind blows east, the wind blows west, And the frost falls and the rain: A weary heart went thankful to rest, And must rise to toil again, ’gain, And must rise to toil again. The wind blows east, the wind blows west, And there comes good luck and bad; The thriftiest man is the cheerfulest; ’Tis a thriftless thing to be sad, sad, ’Tis a thriftless thing to be sad. The wind blows east, the wind blows west; Ye shall know a tree by its fruit: This world, they say, is worst to the best;— But a dastard has evil to boot, boot, But a dastard has evil to boot. The wind blows east, the wind blows west; What skills it to mourn or to talk? A journey I have, and far ere I rest; I must bundle my wallets and walk, walk, I must bundle my wallets and walk. The wind does blow as it lists alway; Canst thou change this world to thy mind? The world will wander its own wise way; I also will wander mine, mine, I also will wander mine.

At a small monastery—or what had been a monastery—outside Obrégon, we stopped; you were suffering the hollow nausea of your first pregnancy, sleeping as best you could through the thousand miles of pines and rocky fields of northern Mexico, so I went ahead through the saddle-colored rooms, past the broken church and the row of empty sheds, where Indian women, according to a sign, once baked the flat bread called sapatos de Maria, to a garden in the back, over the parapet of which I could see the river through some willows: a rinsed bed of sand, dry now in winter. I didn’t want a child, and I was tired of closeness, tired of being kind, so was glad to be alone a while and lay down under a jacaranda tree, and watched through leaves the changing pattern of the sky, which I was tired of too, the scaly, stratospheric winter clouds, edged with light, like the tiny waves you pointed out, reflected on the bottom of a bridge we rowed under in a rented boat, the day you told me of the child—I was tired and slept. It was nearly evening when I woke, two mestizo women hurried talking through the tulip beds, the sky was pale. They’d set small plaques among the plants, naming them, the ornamentals and the fruit. Some, so the writing said, were descendants of the cuttings brought from Spain by monks; intermingled here—Pinot grape with ocotillo, damascena rose—they thrived. I thought of certain tenderness, and forbearance, a man might bring to vines and simple vegetables, cultivated in memory of his home perhaps, in a foreign place; and thought how sometimes what passes on from us has little to do with what we hoped, but nonetheless carries word of who we were and what we found. For a moment then, among the arbors and the flower beds, I did not feel so distant from this time and place, and the edge of my own local fears began to dull. I plucked a sprig—a leaf was all— from a holly bush, and brought it out to you, a little stronger in a portion of myself, a little reconciled, though I couldn’t know then that in a month we would lose the child, and in time you would pass, like a squandered fortune, from my life.

Fortune hath taken thee away, my love, My life’s soul and my soul’s heaven above; Fortune hath taken thee away, my princess; My only light and my true fancy’s mistress. Fortune hath taken all away from me, Fortune hath taken all by taking thee. Dead to all joy, I only live to woe, So fortune now becomes my mortal foe. In vain you eyes, you eyes do waste your tears, In vain you sighs do smoke forth my despairs, In vain you search the earth and heaven above, In vain you search, for fortune rules in love. Thus now I leave my love in fortune’s hands, Thus now I leave my love in fortune’s bands, And only love the sorrows due to me; Sorrow henceforth it shall my princess be. I joy in this, that fortune conquers kings; Fortune that rules on earth and earthly things Hath taken my love in spite of Cupid’s might; So blind a dame did never Cupid right. With wisdom’s eyes had but blind Cupid seen, Then had my love my love for ever been; But love farewell; though fortune conquer thee, No fortune base shall ever alter me.

The neighbors will soon spread their confounding potluck before you. Dressed in period garb, they wear sandals with socks. They subscribe to Life magazine to experience the present as if it were already the past. Their flowering trees were engineered to never drop fruit. Overhead, constellations of stickers glow from bedroom ceilings as souvenirs from a time when life was lived outdoors. All conversations end in silence. The trick is to make it purposeful. It’s not going to get any easier, for these are the CliffsNotes.

Each house smells of strangers: cabbage boiling on the stove, harsh soap at the rim of the sink, starched sheets that scrape against the skin in bed, hard pillows shaped by someone else’s head, rotting bananas, sweaty feet and dust. Each time we come to a new place I try to hide one shirt beneath the mattress just to keep the smell of home. Sometimes they find it, squeeze it through the wringer; hid long enough, the cloth absorbs the air around it, loses its memories. My brother smells like sour milk, unwashed armpits and the school paste he eats. He cries when they hit us; I never do. Each night I hear his sniffles soak the pillow. Come morning, I grab the damp case, hold it to my nose and breathe.