Lisa Robertson

Sometimes I want a corset like to harden me or garnish. I think of this stricture—rain language, building—as a corset: an outer ideal mould, I feel the ideal moulding me the ideal is now my surface just so very perfect I know where to buy it and I take it off. I take it off. If all things fall and we are just emperors, serious and accurate and fugitive in such dormant lines of gorgeousness the day is a locksmith dew lies long on the grass and I a rustic ask: what is a surface—and respond only omniscience, the crumpling face as the domestic emotions elucidate themselves a sea of mist exists so strangely side by side the potent mould of anarchy and scorn.

First all belief is paradise. So pliable a medium. A time not very long. A transparency caused. A conveyance of rupture. A subtle transport. Scant and rare. Deep in the opulent morning, blissful regions, hard and slender. Scarce and scant. Quotidian and temperate. Begin afresh in the realms of the atmosphere, that encompasses the solid earth, the terraqueous globe that soars and sings, elevated and flimsy. Bright and hot. Flesh and hue. Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. We range the spacious fields, a battlement trick and fast. Bright and silver. Ribbons and failings. To and fro. Fine and grand. The sky is complicated and flawed and we’re up there in it, floating near the apricot frill, the bias swoop, near the sullen bloated part that dissolves to silver the next instant bronze but nothing that meaningful, a breach of greeny-blue, a syllable, we’re all across the swathe of fleece laid out, the fraying rope, the copper beech behind the aluminum catalpa that has saved the entire spring for this flight, the tops of these a part of the sky, the light wind flipping up the white undersides of leaves, heaven afresh, the brushed part behind, the tumbling. So to the heavenly rustling. Just stiff with ambition we range the spacious trees in earnest desire sure and dear. Brisk and west. Streaky and massed. Changing and appearing. First and last. This was made from Europe, formed from Europe, rant and roar. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Crested and turbid. Silver and bright. This was spoken as it came to us, to celebrate and tint, distinct and designed. Sure and dear. Fully designed. Dear afresh. So free to the showing. What we praise we believe, we fully believe. Very fine. Belief thin and pure and clear to the title. Very beautiful. Belief lovely and elegant and fair for the footing. Very brisk. Belief lively and quick and strong by the bursting. Very bright. Belief clear and witty and famous in impulse. Very stormy. Belief violent and open and raging from privation. Very fine. Belief intransigent after pursuit. Very hot. Belief lustful and eager and curious before beauty.Very bright. Belief intending afresh. So calmly and clearly. Just stiff with leaf sure and dear and appearing and last. With lust clear and scarce and appearing and last and afresh.

It was Jessica Grim the American poet who first advised me to read Violette Leduc. Lurid conditions are facts. This is no different from the daily protests and cashbars. I now unknowingly speed towards which of all acts, words, conditions — I am troubled that I do not know. When I feel depressed in broad daylight depressed by the disappearance of names, the pollen smearing the windowsill, I picture the bending pages of La Bâtarde and I think of wind. The outspread world is comparable to a large theatre or to rending paper, and the noise it makes when it flaps is riotous. Clothes swish through the air, rubbing my ears. Promptly I am quenched. I’m talking about a cheap paperback which fans and slips to the floor with a shush. Skirt stretched taut between new knees, head turned back, I hold down a branch,

What is this tint that in the shrill cress Will never cease to trouble us and in the fields Gives prick and praise for Beauty? And said birds that feed on berries Are pervious—and shook the snow from his thighs. I thought of nothing carefully, but of snow, and the birds. Then kissed the cup and sipped a little Though almost choked drank slowly Tickled with strange measure She faked a pretty anger I entertained the night with fantastic, empty pleasure We went as far as the ivie-bush And ivie-crowns upon our heads And carried her kiss untouched and entire Then all was fresh, inclined To wriggle and nussle and lascivious Ardent leaps. In the thickest of the wood Bid him kiss close and often And directed him to her fancie The ground had a sweeter scent, the boughs a blush One fruit, rare and rich, would outdo many together She was wild to climb the tree Nor would she be forbidden She seized the apple and put it in her bosom.

To those whose city is taken give glass pockets. To those whose quiver gapes give queens and pace their limbs with flutes, ropes, cups of soft juice. To those whose threshold vacillates give that bruise the dust astonished. To falling heroes give raucous sibyls’ polished knees. To those who sip nectar give teeth. And if they still sip nectar—give green chips of wood. To swimmers give clocks or rank their hearts among new satellites as you would Garbo’s skint lip. To scholars, give dovecotes to virgins, targets. Justice has nothing on them. Virgil, sweetheart, even pretty fops need justice. If they think not let creditors flank them and watch their vigour quickly flag. To exiled brides give tiny knives and beads of mercury then rob them of prudence for prudence is defunct. To those who fist clouds, give powder. And if their sullen wallets flap, give nothing at all. Still I have not addressed lambent fops swathed in honey, the stuttering moon Martyrs, Spartans, Sirens, Mumblers, Pawns Ventriloquists—or your sweet ego The Beloved Ego in the plummy light is you. When I see you in that light I desire all that has been kept from me etcetera. For you. Since your rough shirt reminds me of the first grass pressing my hips and seeds heads fringing the sky and the sky swaying lightly to your scraped breath, since I hear panicked, my sister calling since the gold leaves have all been lost, and you are at least several and variegated I toss this slight thread back The beloved ego on cold marble blurs inscription. Hey Virgil I think your clocked ardour is stuck in the blue vein on my wrist. It stops all judgement

I have tried to say that, although Love is not judgement analysis too is a style of affect since the scale that rends me vulnerable has cut, from abundance, doubt (not that identity shunts civic ratio or consequence) Sure — I would prefer to respond to only the established charms (and forget inconvenience) but her hair was also a kind of honey or instrument. All that is beautiful, from which I choose even artifice, which I hold above nature won’t salve these stuttered accoutrements