– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
We are made for eternity, but we do not know why.
– Elfriede Jelinek, Jackie
She did not want to float or swallow
or fall from a bridge, she did not want to
but she wanted because art,
the water of before and after
she walked long nights
in the calles among the works of ech.o
first image: vertical valour
500centuries of liquid light
she: arms extended torso hunched over
a water turned toward the sky
the colour of ink of algae
of impossible appeasement
warmth’s origin, July
of all proper names in weightless state
I vow a clarity so sharp the iris shatters
sometimes right to Vicenza
she came in silence
existing with a notebook or her camera
in the halls of archives floored in wood
we quickly admitted an obsession we loved
to repeat: here we live well
under the vaulted ceiling and fresco by Titian
from the window the canal water blind
an encyclopedia of bridges and clouds
bright lively beam of molecules in the light
: water that frightens: stop moving
at noon life tells its story in spirals of raw light
in her eyes, smooth yet imaginary
a cartouche of eternity she might have concealed
in her hair and caressed
at cocktail hour limoncello
all eyes turn toward the horses
we contemplate the Orient
it will take many centuries more
to erase the furor
of those four horses, the copy
when the water rises, she telephones
the moon turns in its cone of shadow
if I hunch down I can caress with my finger
these images in the form of silver prints
where sometimes a traveller dozes
her face fingered by wind
she says: this is devious landscape
we will have to count our belongings
tsunami of words
with your palm you wanted to reverse
fear you wanted it just
as the vaporetto arrived
art unfolds sketches of night
deceptive pronoun effects
art raises the rebellious side
of words scolded in Emma’s head
once again we thought of all that water fleeing
we spoke of tables overturned
of crimson dresses gone to pink
under crumbling ceilings
anyway we had to let the light in
night vaporetto night nyx neon slow
at five in the morning dawn entered
slowly sank into the voice
into the chest raising
monochromes of identity
when light strikes the I of sudden bereavements
she holds it in suspension
above the abyss in a wave of ululations
Emma says this image is slow
for the pink of palaces on the grand canal
the lapping of water that aches in the skull
this image is still too slow in the mouth
in the end, it was enough to leave the foam alone
along the canals listen float not searching
any further, the inside of someone
the narration of small absolutes
end of November someone spoke of Chicago
of Grant Park and of history
that night she became crowd
Emma crossed 3times the Ponte dell’Accademia
she did not want to be this rivulet
of repetition
along a blue canal a little
before dusk
in the garden of a Museum or on YouTube
filming or knocking on
her own fibre-optic silence
a little Casanova kissed in the Florian:
she held her like a key in the conversation
keeping a certain distance with her words
so that vous-même surreptitiously broke her heart
the universe bordered memory everywhere.
She’d had twenty years to work back to the Erinyes
and to the Atridae; to re-encounter dragons chimaera
all the red of Carpaccio and the head of Holophernes
twenty years to tame her fertility
without hallucinating in the new world
to adapt her heart’s rhythm
to all the nanotears and swells of melancholy
coffee steaming keyboard fingers
entire days she searches
for a link the paper the ego of echo
she can also boast
of paradoxes and piercings
to recover from the water of shrinking glaciers
from each inflection of life in the voice
how to dig refuge in the figures of the self
exit a hotel room
exposed to all the winds of harmony, and the void
she holds her hand up like some distant machine
that might nourish her, reflect her story
she holds it out in front, hand mask wolf
having seen all the hanged figures
of Goya, and the others often
she touches on all the questions
because an idea of happiness
she washes the hours with words
because flesh because one day it’ll be necessary
to speak of meat and of happiness
she’d had 20years to learn the slippage
between the words women and reality
between universe and room of one’s own
several times her body became lodged
in the word @space
initiating herself into enigmas and the living womb of women
twenty years to transcribe paragraphs of eternity
an intimacy of inkwash in the material of the present
all is tide night haunted
the t-shirt with a skull
no one had worn it
before you that evening mingled with perfume
it passed through the throat
everyone had a name
a little vibration recycled under the tongue
while rain touched the present
on Lido beach
water entered the mouth
burst of pure-blooded Lippizaners.
Then at a gallop you bolted to brush against time
in your chest, and joy.
You keep your tongue young.
a wall of images had to be confronted
women half-buried soon stoned
women nose cut off immense hole of darkness
Emma wavers camera in her grasp
from wordless suffering to the photo
from the photo to those minutiae of story
where you can never again make peace
now she tied her scarf of winter and of darkness
the words went off every which way
why am I so burdened
by shadow and by humanity disculpe
repertory of fine needles stuck to immensity
prose, she thought, form dressed in sorrow
Story
/ I didn’t write the story, you know. It was to start in Montréal, across from Parc Lafontaine, with a woman looking out a hotel window. She’s awaiting a manuscript she’s contracted to translate in the next six months without knowing the author’s name, sex or age. And maybe without even knowing what her mother tongue was, language of childhood and of babbling, of fever, laughter and cries sealed in the invisible. The contract says a manuscript of one hundred pages written by O. R.
I’d been promised the story, I was waiting for it. In the distance I could ma
ke out my fear. I kept the woman moving, as I do now, watching her walk in a Montréal crowd thirsty for jazz. She strolls down Jeanne Mance Street between the water fountains and the avalanche of sounds entwined in thoughts and the pianos of Satie, Honegger and Malipiero of Venice. Later, at nightfall, under fetish light of lipstick rouge, when we can make out shoulders and fragile napes, she’ll reappear with her intelligent face and questions for the entire planet.
I’d been promised a story, it awaited me. Everywhere prose settled into my notebooks, into thoughts, it positioned its people, wove connections, knotted plots in my bed just before I fell asleep. It seemed able to soothe and give pleasure. I liked its seeming transparency, which compelled me to think with that little bit of cunning and stillness needed to mollify the winged silhouette of death. Then one morning, poetry resurfaced, adapting for a while to the prose that enveloped pretty much every detail in my head. Stories leaking the way water leaks, seeping into the presence or slightest burst of poetry.
Time passed. The grammar of the everyday won’t let go. From now on, the poem absorbs the dust of prose and the very special ardour akin to the need to think in the flow of time /
You
‘Around 1900, the world was as full of pianos as it is full of cars today. The market was saturated; people bought an instrument simply because the piano next door had become intolerable and they preferred to produce their own noise.’
I tell you life is only good for living
it takes dialogues, that’s all
quivering swearing I tell you
I’m scarcely twenty years old scarcely
a pronoun in my solitude
from before all the wars
subterfuge of plural
having all of you in my head
creates a strange distance
like a number that could carve
a tactile sensation into the alphabet
of repeatedly the same voice
you does not really distance
attracts sometimes if we extend both arms
palms poised to plunge deep
into the imagination and thorax
you rapid worn down while traversing
a century a catastrophe
gibbon teeth in the night
orality of pink dust and subtitles
oh| my living proofs
you know I caressed all that’s needed
of life and sumptuous beasts
but spread your wings once again
and your shells of ego, all of you, take wing
right to fine thirst and breath ribbon
be here be this
nocturnal figures plummeting
between centuries and works
know how to slow down
or figure out how
the inside of someone can shift
to reign freely in the form of petals
another day streaming
phrases dawn-fresh without error
Without Story
without story, don’t touch the ashes
1
on a pebble the light
does it keep pain at bay
forever
the threat of clenched fists
the obsession of tomorrow
2
knots of habit
we were saying speed
invisible tears
or the dust has ribbons
3
without story we repeat
ankles, my head burns
epidemic,
we can only repeat my mother
breast or I, without story we need
the present, the light
4
without story no spilt wine
nor conversation nor caress that swims
and rosy contour around the fingers
nor photo of you who wanted
naked, brief and full of oxygen
5
without story fear rises
together crumbles fast
between the migrations
wild bursts of look-at-me
without story carpet of opacity out to infinity
6
without story heat of noon or face
the abyss wells up everywhere
it’s too fast the last breath
7
without story who’ll still want to lick
the vague matter at the origin of thoughts
the terror harpooning the body from the waist down,
8
without story continents dwindle
leaving only our lives slow to become lives
without pili-pili to reverse the pain
in the darkness of savoir-vie
Ultrasound
stubborn backbone
that chafes the depth of thoughts
in the plupresent of fear and ecstasy
in the simple present of our intelligent tissues
anon a landscape that rises like an ancient beast
flexible from throat to sex capable of flight and sudden
plunges of inebriate blue
the present wants the present up to the ears
then pain marks who is present; in the distance, cicadas
phrases unfurled 2ice without infinitive
at the time of the best sketches of solitude
versatile migrant pauses
to talk no more of coffins and repetition
laments language or quick the eyes above all
laugh at themselves now because of fragile pronouns
with all our being we head toward elsewhere
to dip the alphabet in new mysteries
simple certainty of shadow
forever in the breast we carry a species overwhelmed
the pain of sincere wishes exchanged in chaos
so we clean the keyboard with our fingers
we disperse slowly solo
each crevice each key certain evenings
to speak in prose to speak dissipates the drownings of origin,
you’ve seen there are rhinestones
breezes too I was saying who
camouflages what
everyone wanted to enter consciousness
to meddle in the tiniest atoms of frenzy
on the brink of death everyone rolled their anguish
auto marble dice voice the same voice in a loop
to the end of love
*
here I started to think again of Venice,
of ordinary scenes from Tiepolo, life of clay
piano and wise songs of water
amid touch screens where
question of instinct
we had to mix tastes,
languages, silks linen
tissue of intrigues
in the evening dig into the universe
cascade of ubiquity
no accumulation
a single longevity
maybe we’re true, maybe on the contrary we’re tomorrow
how to know if what comes
arises from deep in the throat from a double carnivore tumult
from a supple wrenching into the energy of the cosmos
maybe we’re true. The pain is still whole
*
nervous depth of sensations
from the anecdote to the others, time flays
we live in the flow of time, don’t we
all these sofas sheets and beds where bodies are laid
let the fires rage, breathlessness revolt
The universe is transparent toward the future
– Hubert Reeves, Atoms of Silence
the power of questions
if you sit at the piano
amid whirlwinds designed
to make us vanish
what on earth was I thinking
to touch like this
the continuous murmur of lives compared
our centre of gravity feverish
the car
mine powders of sudden wind
back then, we did not understand
today we know
one sex every month, a sex
hidden in the versatile pink that swallows
the time of petals
don’t be afraid
tomorrow won’t drown tomorrow
or 2narratives gallop between the pupils
the present erodes memory
the very speed of absence
knowledge shifted swallowing origin
vocabulary and night
each swan
our rose endurance through the centuries
I also noticed that we’d added
to the heart and the everyday
minor lacerations that mark
without embrace or snares
so I entered another era
with skulls and all that in the grass
because au revoir we loved
nature and to lie down there
I let go repeating
with a body a soul and another verb.
I’m broken: rivers music and seaways.
I tow a dawn of eviscerated language
stuck to the great crushed totality of history.
I let go dying
in the distance memory emp/tied
of sea and wind by screens