Under the Sign by Ann Lauterbach Page B

vernacular
thought’s respite or figura
    arrested in flight. Tact and the cradle jammed
an indecipherable setting across ligatures
    of care. Patience and the cloth elbow of a monk
scribe to the half-life of angels/quick
    fluidity of names/incantation waits for veracity
if to be sure is to be otherwise among stones
    everything undone/inertial tread along
a patriotic map of stars. Voice into hole.
    Voice stares not into anything seen but lifts
harmonic for glue in the dark
    hot chapel under the patterned glass
and came here with a root in mind.
    2.
    Came flustered with concision, mother’s
child face in copied blue her
    skeptical smile out of hearing out
of hearing in view or Stacy’s
    inner ear stares into Lucretius:
atoms for Venus, roses for the lascivious
    Miss Stein. Mother at the side of the
carriage/sister Alice
    within earshot, smiling infant, smiling
love of the one smiling
    back and Will said something about love
and I eyed his mouth and he said diffuse
    what’s the use? Mother
may have asked the question within
    earshot like that dog. I like the middle voice.
The gesture could be simple
    not exhausted not vestigial not a painter’s
despair in the purple cowl of the monk’s robe
    in the elegant gallery shoes leaving shortly
for vacation in a small town in France
    to read Edward Said writing on Genet
missing voice among many these voices
    what is possible/to be
belated among the last ditch
    of experience as sound among thieves
restless articulations of this time.
    â€œNoises from the depths,” Deleuze remarks,
“become voices when they find in certain
    perforated surfaces (the mouth) the
conditions of their articulation.”
    3.
    I like the cast of the crisscrossed fence pattern
on the driveway. Shadows belong to footage.
    Everything belongs to something else.
The gesture/although I wish I were walking uphill
    is to open the hand. I repeat: open your hand. This to indicate, to sign, suggest
    you are willing to give up holding on
or keeping or really in any way
    imagining that you possess
anything. There’s light on the wires.
    The green is heavily green. August adds
weight to green. Walking uphill
    with a friend I said
opening the hand , in response
    asking the degree to which
to interfere with or keep kempt
    nature in relation to the path
we were following, the surrounding field.
    Ann Hamilton and I made a video
when I was in Columbus, Ohio,
    visiting/a video of my hand
enacting or rather accompanying
    a reading taken from Emerson’s essay
“Circles,” in which, it seemed to me,
    O is a frequently repeated
soundscape. I don’t think
    but then I don’t know
if Emerson thought about these
    recursive O s, but
I felt or feel sure that
    writers, some writers, respond
to different registers
    of sense possibility. Perhaps this
observation goes without saying
    but having said it
I will let it stand not exactly as
    a statue or statute, but as a bringing
forth into the space of hearing
    obvious or given acknowledgment
that sound conjures itself into
    or while seeing what you say.
Here reminded of Lisa Robertson’s
    essay, in her book Nilling ,
called “Lastingness,” in which she
    cites Jean Starobinski’s citing Saussure’s
idea of a “phonic matrix” in classical Latin
    poems, finding “mannekins,” isolated
“theme-words whose uttered sounds were
    hidden, and sometimes scrambled, beneath
the overt textual semantics—a material substrata
    of encoded sound.” I don’t think finding
repeated O sounds in Emerson’s “Circles”
    qualifies but it might be a vestigial
trace of this complex arena of sound sense
    which I think in the new technological
dispensation is falling away from our shared
    calling. “Let’s listen to music,” one girl says
to another, in affectlessness. Vacuity
    or vestige of the gesture
caught between Venus and Hercules,
    promise of the black elision, so to assert
quote a