tricks of the light, armies
In debacle, helter skelter, pell mell,
Fleeing us who sometime did us seek,
And there is no place, nothing
To hide in, if it took weeks and months
With time running out. Nothing could be done.
Those ramparts, granular as Saturn’s rings,
That seem some tomb of pleasures, a Sans Souci,
Are absent clouds. The real diversions on the ground
Are shrub and nettle, planing the way
For asking me to come down, and the snow, the frost, the rain,
The cold, the heat, for dry or wet
We must lodge on the plain…. Later, dying
“Of complications,” only it must really have been much later, her hair
Had that whited look. Now it’s darker.
SHE
And an intruder is present.
But it always winds down like this
To the rut of night. Boats no longer come
Plying along the sides of docks in this part
Of the world. We are alone. Only by climbing
A low bluff does the intent get filled in
Along the edge, and then only subtly.
Evening weaves along these open tracts almost
Until the solemn tolling of a bell
Launches its moment of pain and obscurity, wider
Than any net can seize, or star presage. Further on it says
That all the missing parts must be tracked down
By coal-light or igloo-light because
In so doing we navigate these our passages,
And take sides on certain issues, are
Emphatically pro or con about what concerns us,
Such as the strangeness of our architecture,
The diffuse quality of our literature.
HE
Or does each tense fit, and each desire
Drown in the lake of one vague one, featureless
And indeterminate? Which is why one’s own wish
Keeps getting granted for someone else? In the forest
Are no clean sheets, no other house
But leaves and boughs. How many
Other things can one want? Nice hair
And eyes, galoshes on a rainy day? For those who go
Under the green helm know it lets itself
Become known, at different moments, under different aspects.
SHE
Unless some movie did it first, or
A stranger came to the door and then the change
Was real until it went away. Or is it
Like a landscape in its inner folds, relaxed
And with the sense of there being about to be some more
Until the first part is digested and then it twists
Only because this is the way we can see things?
It is revisionism in that you are
Always trying to put some part of the past back in,
And although it fits it doesn’t belong in the
Dark blue glass ocean of having been remembered again.
From earliest times we were cautioned not to get excited
About things, so this quality shows up so far only in
Slightly deeper tree-shadows that anticipate this PACING THE FLOOR
That takes in the walls, the window and the woods.
HE
Then it was as if a kind of embarrassment,
The product of a discretion lodged far back in the past,
Blotted them against a wall of haze.
Pursuing time this way, as a dog nudges a bone,
You find it has doubled back, the flanges
Of night having now replaced the big daffy gray clouds.
O now no longer speak, but rather seem
In the way of gardens long ago turned away from,
And now no one any more will have to believe anything
He or she doesn’t want to as golden light wholly
Saturates a wooden fence and speaks for everybody
In a native accent that sounds new and foreign.
But the hesitation stayed on, and came to be permanent
Because they were thinking about each other.
SHE
That’s an unusual … As though a new crescent
Reached out and lapped at a succession of multitudes,
Diminished now, but still lively and true.
It seems to say: there are lots of differences inside.
There were differences when only you knew them.
Now they are an element, not themselves,
And hands are idle, or weigh the head
Like an outsize grapefruit, or an ocarina
Closes today with a comical wail.
Go in to them, see
What the session was about, how much they destroyed
And what preserved of what was meant to shuffle
Along in its time: hunched red shoulders
Of huntsmen, what they were doing
There
In debacle, helter skelter, pell mell,
Fleeing us who sometime did us seek,
And there is no place, nothing
To hide in, if it took weeks and months
With time running out. Nothing could be done.
Those ramparts, granular as Saturn’s rings,
That seem some tomb of pleasures, a Sans Souci,
Are absent clouds. The real diversions on the ground
Are shrub and nettle, planing the way
For asking me to come down, and the snow, the frost, the rain,
The cold, the heat, for dry or wet
We must lodge on the plain…. Later, dying
“Of complications,” only it must really have been much later, her hair
Had that whited look. Now it’s darker.
SHE
And an intruder is present.
But it always winds down like this
To the rut of night. Boats no longer come
Plying along the sides of docks in this part
Of the world. We are alone. Only by climbing
A low bluff does the intent get filled in
Along the edge, and then only subtly.
Evening weaves along these open tracts almost
Until the solemn tolling of a bell
Launches its moment of pain and obscurity, wider
Than any net can seize, or star presage. Further on it says
That all the missing parts must be tracked down
By coal-light or igloo-light because
In so doing we navigate these our passages,
And take sides on certain issues, are
Emphatically pro or con about what concerns us,
Such as the strangeness of our architecture,
The diffuse quality of our literature.
HE
Or does each tense fit, and each desire
Drown in the lake of one vague one, featureless
And indeterminate? Which is why one’s own wish
Keeps getting granted for someone else? In the forest
Are no clean sheets, no other house
But leaves and boughs. How many
Other things can one want? Nice hair
And eyes, galoshes on a rainy day? For those who go
Under the green helm know it lets itself
Become known, at different moments, under different aspects.
SHE
Unless some movie did it first, or
A stranger came to the door and then the change
Was real until it went away. Or is it
Like a landscape in its inner folds, relaxed
And with the sense of there being about to be some more
Until the first part is digested and then it twists
Only because this is the way we can see things?
It is revisionism in that you are
Always trying to put some part of the past back in,
And although it fits it doesn’t belong in the
Dark blue glass ocean of having been remembered again.
From earliest times we were cautioned not to get excited
About things, so this quality shows up so far only in
Slightly deeper tree-shadows that anticipate this PACING THE FLOOR
That takes in the walls, the window and the woods.
HE
Then it was as if a kind of embarrassment,
The product of a discretion lodged far back in the past,
Blotted them against a wall of haze.
Pursuing time this way, as a dog nudges a bone,
You find it has doubled back, the flanges
Of night having now replaced the big daffy gray clouds.
O now no longer speak, but rather seem
In the way of gardens long ago turned away from,
And now no one any more will have to believe anything
He or she doesn’t want to as golden light wholly
Saturates a wooden fence and speaks for everybody
In a native accent that sounds new and foreign.
But the hesitation stayed on, and came to be permanent
Because they were thinking about each other.
SHE
That’s an unusual … As though a new crescent
Reached out and lapped at a succession of multitudes,
Diminished now, but still lively and true.
It seems to say: there are lots of differences inside.
There were differences when only you knew them.
Now they are an element, not themselves,
And hands are idle, or weigh the head
Like an outsize grapefruit, or an ocarina
Closes today with a comical wail.
Go in to them, see
What the session was about, how much they destroyed
And what preserved of what was meant to shuffle
Along in its time: hunched red shoulders
Of huntsmen, what they were doing
There
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