Michael Palmer

You can say the broken word but cannot speak for it, can name a precise and particular shade of blue if you can remember its name (Woman of the South, New Lilac, Second Sky?) As the light, close to blinding, fell—falls in bars across a particular page, this then another, some other followed far too closely by night Or as the sleeping pages recall themselves, one by one, in dream-riddled, guarded tones, recall themselves from path to sloped meadow, meadow to burnt shore, shore to poised wave, dismay to present, any present of the bewildered and the buried alive (we’ve been told they were buried alive) Is there a door he hasn’t noticed and beyond it a letter which created the door or claims it created a door which would open either way

The bend in the river followed us for days and above us the sun doubled and redoubled its claims Now we are in a house with forty-four walls and nothing but doors Outside the trees, chokecherries, mulberries and oaks are cracking like limbs We can do nothing but listen or so someone claims, the Ice Man perhaps, all enclosed in ice though the light has been shortening our days and coloring nights the yellow of hay, scarlet of trillium, blue of block ice Words appear, the texture of ice, with messages etched on their shells: Minna 1892, Big Max and Little Sarah, This hour ago everyone watched as the statues fell Enough of such phrases and we’ll have a book Enough of such books and we’ll have mountains of ice enough to balance our days with nights enough at last to close our eyes

At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. Then it goes back into my throat drying my throat. Miracle of Sicilian weeping. Bleeds in one of his many dreams. He announced that he was about to give a free ‘poetry suicide’—a free ‘poultry recital.’ Everyone be- lieved him. _______ At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. A voyage will hide itself in your heart, bleeding from the left eye, the organ of sight. A voyage will hide itself in someone unfamiliar like a heap of salt. Mingled with the ordinary blueness would be waves of foreheads shaped like cups. She thought he could hear her. To dance is to live. _______ Calm and order of an autumn sky. At the end of a bridge is the state of prison, voyage of eye and throat full of the fear of night. Then all of winter will enter like a red block, or like the calm and order of an autumn sky. 139. Change of form. 139a. Change of colour. 122. Pitfalls. 136. Covers with a lid. _______ It doesn’t matter what you say but how you say it. By pronouncing the words they become different. It comes from above (pointing to his head). Then it goes all sorts of ways down. Then it goes back into my throat drying my throat. Tonight it’s a certainty that the President will resign (‘a virtual certainty’). After the party they drove back to her house where she sucked him off while he spoke to someone on the tele- phone about the possibility of a job. _______ Plato’s warning against telling stories,mython tina diēgeisthai

(for Sarah when she’s older) The round and sad-eyed man puffed cigars as if he were alive. Gillyflowers to the left of the apple, purple bells to the right and a grass-covered hill behind. I am sad today said the sad-eyed man for I have locked my head in a Japanese box and lost the key. I am sad today he told me for there are gillyflowers by the apple and purple bells I cannot see. Will you look at them for me he asked, and tell me what you find? I cannot I replied for my eyes have grown sugary and dim from reading too long by candlelight. Tell me what you’ve read then said the round and sad-eyed man. I cannot I replied for my memory has grown tired and dim from looking at things that can’t be seen by any kind of light and I’ve locked my head in a Japanese box and thrown away the key. Then I am you and you are me said the sad-eyed man as if alive. I’ll write you in where I should be between the gillyflowers and the purple bells and the apple and the hill and we’ll puff cigars from noon till night as if we were alive.

The voice, because of its austerity, will often cause dust to rise. The voice, because of its austerity, will sometimes attempt the representation of dust. Someone will say, I can’t breathe—as if choking on dust. The voice ages with the body. It will say, I was shaped by light escaping from a keyhole. Or, I am the shape of that light. It will say, For the body to breathe, a layer must be peeled away. It will say, What follows is a picture of how things are for me now. It will say, The rose is red, twice two is four—as if another were present. The dust rises in spirals. It will say, The distance from Cairo to anywhere is not that great. As if one had altered the adjustment of a microscope. Or examined its working parts. Possibly an instrument covered with dust and forgotten on a shelf. Beside a hatbox and a pair of weathered boots. The voice will expand to fill a given space. As if to say, This space is not immeasurable. This space is not immeasurable. When held before your eyes. And which voice is it says (or claims to say), Last night I dreamt of walls and courses of brick, last night I dreamt of limbs. As you dream—always unwillingly—of a writing not visible and voices muffled by walls. As if the question: lovers, prisoners, visitors. The voice, as an act of discipline or play, will imitate other voices. This is what I am doing now. This is what I’m doing now. The clock behind my back, its Fusée mechanism. Voice one recognizes from years before. Beneath water, hidden by a spark. Here at the heart of winter, or let’s say spring. Voice with a history before its eyes. With a blue dot before its eyes. History of dust before its eyes. It will say, as if remembering, The letter S stands for a slow match burning. On the table before me. No numbers on this watch. And I live in a red house that once was brown. A paper house, sort of falling down. Such is the history of this house. It looks like this. Looks just like this. We think to say in some language.

[Let a be taken as . . .] a liquid line beneath the skin and b where the blue tiles meet body and the body’s bridge a seeming road here, endless rain pearling light chamber after chamber of dust-weighted air the project of seeing things so to speak, or things seen namely a hand, namely the logic of the hand holding a bell or clouded lens the vase perched impossibly near the edge obscuring the metal tines. She said “perhaps” then it echoed. I stood there torn felt hat in hand wondering what I had done to cause this dizziness “you must learn to live with.” It reveals no identifiable source (not anyway the same as a forest floor). A vagrant march time, car passes silently, arm rests at his side holding a bell or ground lens where c stands for inessential night – how that body would move vs how it actually does – too abstract &/or not abstract enough but a closed curve in either case she might repeat indicating the shallow eaves nothing but coats and scarves below the window his-her face canted to the left nothing imagined or imaginable dark and nothing actually begun so that the color becomes exactly as it was in the miniuscule word for it scribbled beside an arrow on the far wall perfectly how else continuous with memory. There are pomegranates on the table though they have been placed there salt, pepper, books and schedules all sharing the same error and measure of inattention. What she says rolls forward. I shouted toward motion, other gestured, child laughs, sky, traffic, photograph. I gave a real pain, expelled breath, decided. Both arms in thought, mirror otherwise, abandoned structures mostly, the glass door with its inscription lay open before us, nothing to fear.

The limit of the song is this prelude to a journey to the outer islands, the generative sentence, waltz project, forms, qualities, suns, moons, rings, an inside-outside then an outside-inside shaped with her colored clays. The days yet propse themselves as self-evident, everything there everything here and you are reading in a way natural to theatre a set of instructions that alters itself automatically as you proceed west from death to friendliness, the two topics upon which you are allowed to meditate under the first broad drops of rain. The planes will be piloted by ancestors who have come back to life. Why the delay.

Who did he talk to Did she trust what she saw Who does the talking Whose words formed awkward curves Did the lion finally talk Did the sleeping lion talk Did you trust a north window What made the dog bark What causes a grey dog to bark What does the juggler tell us What does the juggler’s redness tell us Is she standing in an image Were they lost in the forest Were they walking through a forest Has anything been forgotten Did you find it in the dark Is that one of them new atomic-powered wristwatches Was it called a talking song Is that an oblong poem Was poetry the object Was there once a road here ending at a door Thus from bridge to bridge we came along Did the machine seem to talk Did he read from an empty book Did the book grow empty in the dark, grey felt hat blowing down the street, arms pumping back and forth, legs slightly bowed Are there fewer ears than songs Did he trust a broken window Did he wake beneath a tree in the recent snow Whose words formed difficult curves Have the exaggerations quieted down The light is lovely on trees which are not large My logic is all in the melting-pot My life now is very economical I can say nothing of my feeling about space Nothing could be clearer than what you see on this wall Must we give each one a name Is it true they all have names Would it not have been simpler Would it not have been simpler to begin Were there ever such buildings I must remember to mention the trees I must remember to invent some trees Who told you these things Who taught you how to speak Who taught you not to speak Whose is the voice that empties

But the buried walls and our mouths of fragments, no us but the snow staring at us. . . And you Mr. Ground-of_what, Mr. Text, Mr. Is-Was, can you calculate the ratio between wire and window, between tone and row, copula and carnival and can you reassemble light from the future-past in its parabolic nest or recite an entire winter’s words, its liberties and psuedo-elegies, the shell of a street-car in mid-turn or scattered fires in the great hall I would say not-I here I’d say The Book of Knots I’d say undertows and currents and waterspouts, streaks of phosphorus and rivervine winds Dear Z, I’d say it’s time, it’s nearly time, it’s almost, it’s just about, it’s long past time now time now for the vex- for the vox- for the voices of shadows, time for the prism letters, trinkets and shrouds, for a whirl in gauzy scarves around the wrecked piazza Messieurs-Dames, Meine Herren und Damen, our word-ballon, you will note, is slowly rising over the parched city, its catacombs, hospitals and experimental gardens, its toll-gates, ghettos and ring-roads, narcoleptics and therapists and stray cats Ladies and Gentleen, our menu for this flight, due to temporary shortages, will be an alpha-omega soup, Bactrian hump, and nun’s farts As we enter the seventh sphere, you will discover a thin layer of ice just beginning to form on your limbs Do not be alarmed, this is normal You will experience difficulty breathing, this is normal The breathing you experience is difficulty, this is normal Dear Z, Should I say space constructed of echoes, rifts, mirrors, a strange year for touring the interior Should I say double dance, Horn, axis and wheel Dear A, Scuttled ships are clogging the harbors and their cargoes lie rotting on the piers Prepare executions and transfusions Put on your latest gear

Yet the after is still a storm as witness bent shadbush and cord grass in stillness sand littered with the smallest of fragments whether shell or bone That city we are far from is still frozen, still in ruins (except its symmetries be renewed by sleep, its slant colors redeemed) Nothing has changed but its name and the air that it breathes There’s still no truth in making sense while the ash settles, so fine that planes keep falling from the sky And the name once again to be the old one Saint Something, Saint Gesture, Saint Entirely the Same as if nothing or no one had been nameless in the interim or as if still could be placed beside storm that simply, as in a poem Have you heard the angels with sexed tongues, met the blind boy who could see with his skin, his body curled inward like a phrase, like an after in stillness or a letter erased Have you seen what’s written on him as question to an answer or calendar out of phase Add up the number of such days Add illness and lilt as formed on the tongue Add that scene identical with its negative, that sentence which refuses to speak, present which cannot be found