Carolyn Forche

Blue Hour

for Harry and Sean Christophe

These moments are immortal, and most transitory of all; no content may be secured from them…. Beams of their power stream into the ordered world and dissolve it again and again.

— Martin Buber

Sequestered Writing

Horses were turned loose in the child’s sorrow. Black and roan, cantering through snow.

The way light fills the hand with light, November with graves, infancy with white.

White. Given lilacs, lilacs disappear. Then low voices rising in walls.

The way they withdrew from the child’s body and spoke as if it were not there.

What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?

— With its no one without its I—

A dwarf ghost? A closet of empty clothes?

Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.

Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.

At the end of the hall, it sleepwalks into a mirror wearing mother’s robe.

A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face. Come here.

The bookcase knows, and also the darkness of books. Long passages into,

Endless histories toward, sleeping pages about. Why else toss gloves into a grave?

A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it came.

Words holding the scent of an asylum fifty years. It is fifty years, then.

The child hears from within: Come here and know, below

And unbeknownst to us, what these fields had been.

Blue Hour

for Sean Christophe

The moon slips from its cerement, and my son, already disappearing into a man, moves toward his bed for the night, wrapped in a towel of lake scent.

A viola, night-voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes.

A woman alone rows across the lake. Her life is intact, but what she thought could never be taken has been taken. An iron bridge railing one moment its shadow the next.

It is n’y voir que du bleu, it is blind to something. Nevertheless.

Even the most broken life can be restored to its moments.

My son rows toward me against the wind. For thirty-six years, he rows. In 1986, he is born in Paris.

Bice the clouds, watchet, indigo, woad.

We lived overlooking the cemetery. It was the summer of the Paris bombings. I walked him among the graves for what seemed hours but were clouds drifting across marble.

Believing it possible to have back the field in its flowering, my friend has brought me here, has given me an open window, the preludes, an echo of my son’s laughter on the rumpled lake.

Go wherever you can but keep returning to the present.

The human soul weighs twenty-six grams. A cathedral can become a dovecote.

I was born in America just after the war. My legs grew deformed, and so they had to be fitted with a special brace.

At night I banged the brace against the wooden crib bars and cried (so they say). The cries had to be stopped before I woke “the entire house.”

In the morning, footsteps, a wind caught between roofs. From the quarry of souls they come into being: supernal lights, concealed light, light which has no end.

Everything in the world has a spirit released by its sound.

The room turns white again, and white. For years I have opened my eyes and not known where I was.

It was like a kettle wrapped in towels and bubbling, spewing camphor clouds against walls turning the world beyond the windows white.

I couldn’t move, and when they lifted the tented sheet covering the crib it was only to touch my face.

This was the year my mother’s mother died in the asylum, Eloise. Mindless. Without protection from the world.

Her hair, white, everywhere, her eyes the windows of a ruined house.

Like a kettle, but made of apothecary glass, so that it was possible to watch the liquid boil inside.

Sometime later I would find the suitcase of clippings: walls smeared with waste, bedsheets mapped in urine, and how later, when Eloise burned, they were still tied to their chairs.

By late summer, the fields are high with foamflower, fleabane, loosestrife, mullein, and above these wings like chapel windows.

The first love is also there, running through the field as if he could escape.

They were in their chairs and in their beds, tied to the bedrails. Some had locked themselves in the dispensary, as more than fire they feared the world.

Here grow bellflower and blind gentian, blue-eyed grass and touch-me-not. I don’t know who came into that room but spirits also came.

Objects in the room grew small grew large again. The doll laughed like my mother’s mother.

In every future window their white gowns, a stone ruin behind a sign forbidding trespass for years to come.

They came into the room and left, and later my mother would suffer the same emptiness.

In the years just after the war, it was not as certain that a child would live to be grown. Trucks delivered ice and poured coal into bins below the houses.

You see, one can live without having survived.

I have returned to Paris: a morning flecked with sparrows, the garret casements open over the blue-winged roofs.

The two-storey windows a spackled fresco of sky.

From the loggia, it is possible to gaze out over the graves. In the armoire, books, and little paper soldiers fighting the Franco-Prussian War.

At the farm-table many afternoons with the windows open, I conjugated the future perfect, ivy shivering on cemetery walls, the infant asleep—

How is it possible that I am living here, as if a childhood dream had found an empty theater in which to mount a small production of its hopes?

The doors of the coal chutes open. It is the grave of Svoboda. A night paved with news reports, the sky breaking that the world could be otherwise.

One does not forget stones versus tanks. When our very existence broadcast an appeal. Shall not say adieu when a country ceases to be.

A little later, a burial on a hillside in a pine box.

The empty flesh like stone beneath my hands—

A field lifted into a train window.

Under the ice, hay flowers, anne’s lace and lupines. My father digging through snow in a fatigue no sleep could relieve.

And the first love, sequestered in an attic room until spring.

We row to the middle of the lake in a guideboat a century old, water pewter in a coming-storm light, a diminishing signature of smoke from one of the cabins.

Will his life open to hers, she asks, now that she has traveled all the way to the edge of herself?

At night we sleep under blankets also a century old, beside cold stoves forged at Horseshoe, again a hundred years.

At late day the lake stills, and the hills on the far shore round themselves in the water.

We climb over rock moss and lichen, through fern stands and up the rain-slicked trail to the peak.

No longer could she live alone. As if dead, looking into a mirror with no face.

Star-spangle, woodsia, walking leaf, the ghosts of great blue heron.

What one of us lives through, each must, so that this, of which we are part, will know itself.

Here, where there was almost nothing, we waited in the birch-lit clouds, holding the uncertain hand of a lost spirit.

When my son was an infant we woke for his early feeding at l’heure bleue—cerulean, gentian, hyacinth, delft, jouvence. What were also the milk hours.

This one who had come toward me all my life now gazed at the skies above Montparnasse as if someone were there, gesturing to him from the slate light.

He looked at me and the asylum shimmered, assembled again into brick-light and wards of madness. Emptiness left my mother. The first love in field upon field.

The dolls were dolls, the curtain a curtain. The one in the grave said yes. Adieu, country. Adieu, Franco-Prussian War.

Curfew

for Sean

The curfew was as long as anyone could remember

Certainty’s tent was pulled from its little stakes

It was better not to speak any language

There was a man cloaked in doves, there was chandelier music

The city, translucent, shattered but did not disappear

Between the no-longer and the still-to-come

The child asked if the bones in the wall

Belonged to the lights in the tunnel

Yes, I said, and the stars nailed shut his heaven

protected from the silence she slid she too into this loss of self that reaches its height

and is reversed in a clump of charred roses

— Jacques Dupin

Nocturne: an elegy

What happened? His face was visible then not. Around him snow fell, but over him grass remained, wet and young and shaped like a coffin.

I laid her in the snow, she who I was, and walked away.

And the house? Shuttered against fog, awake, windblown.

“The children had cocoa for breakfast, and milk with bread and jam at lunch. They took naps in the afternoon. They had a dog. At the end of the winter there was ‘no more snow.’”

And the cries were those of gulls following a seed plough.

The people of this world are moving into the next, and with them their hours and the ink of their ability to make thought.

Particles of light have taken from them antiphon, asylum, balefire, benediction.

Snow fell onto her coat and chewen gloves, at night like apple blossoms in tar, and my solace became that she would remain as she was.

When the house was alive, its walls recorded the rising and falling of the bed, as if a wind—

The hurrying-forth took with it casement, casque, chalice.

So why does it matter how, precisely? Behind a curtain in late day with a length of rope. In one of the upper rooms, where a cold rose even when the house was shuttered.

His mother on the porch, dressing like a man even then, and the house in the photograph behind her in flames, mother and house.

Beneath the ice, open-eyed but absent, she who I was, with ribbon scars faint across her. Every tip of wheat-stalk lit by sun.

They took with them communicant, cruet, and the ability to keep watch. Having lit the night sky, their heaven vanished.

He needed to feel as if he were going to die, many times to feel it, many hundreds of times.

It came along and passed beyond. Had I been. Were you not. Because I believed I was alone.

Until the derelict house offered its last apparition.

As a star plummets from darkness, a soul is exiled. Light, silk, the rope, black storms of dream.

That one day he was given a new mother, and it was she who starved them, she who sent them into the wood to cut the very switch—

So with the rope, as if he could replace the past. A child awakened by a whip. Until his narrow coffin and cup of sleep.

He was only a boy when the world darkened. But the switches were easy to find, so red in winter.

The house where one could dance without clothes imagined an invisible piano, stove mice, chimney swallows, a curtain, a cry.

What may have been the beginning of life after death.

In the open arms of a burnt wind he returned to me, barefoot by choice, bearing gingerbread, chocolate, quince jam, a bag of candy.

Look! Whole villages intact and shimmering. The very body itself begins to evanesce, it has not true boundary. Death changes it as a mirror changes a face.

Then he used the past to refer to the present. Flour-sacks, school-chalk, a coherent life.

Wings slap along the wall, and in the hardened owl dung, crickets glint. Dust settles on the house until entire sentences are written.

A window haunted by an open hand. Here, he said, his voice like gauze like grieving.

Over the writing table, an empty map: years to connect the little marks. In his closet among the linens his weapon of choice.

In answer to your question, no, he could not have done it. The rope was used for something else, worn from use, a cry a stiffening.

It was with this he untied himself again and again, in the bed and before the fire, blue-voiced and changed of face.

The house saw everything as does every house. Hollow walls, staircase, sorrowing ink. It was the last time.

They had been children in towns years apart, she who I was, and the man in the coroner’s arms.

Perhaps those born after the war are those whose lives the war took.

An abandoned house, after all, will soon give itself back, and its walls become as unreadable as symbols on silk.

With the departed, a sense of time, and sleep even sleep is taken, and the world appears as if it were—

Every spring I return to her, laying my thoughts to rest like a wreath on water.

These are the words no longer. Here are the photographs taken when we were alive.

Refuge

In the blue silo of dawn, in earth-smoke and birch copse, where the river of hands meets the Elbe.

In the peace of your sleeping face, Mein Liebchen.

We have our veiled memory of running from police dogs through a blossoming orchard, and another

Of not escaping them. That was — ago — (a lifetime), but now you are invisible in my arms, a soul

Acquiring speech, the body its blind light, whispering Noli me frangere even as it is in death shattered.

We were one in the other. When the doves rose at once, and our refuge became wing-light—

Writing Kept Hidden

The black fire of ink on paper took hold of their souls — incorporeal fire.

There was no protection this fire couldn’t touch nor darkness nor a moment.

It lasted as long as a dream it was no dream. Heteroglossia of nervous shortwave, cloud of blown walls.

In the barracks, those who had sketched themselves in coal and smoke became coal and smoke.

And the living remained, linking unknown things to the known: residue, scapular, matchlight, name on a tongue.

Then, for an hour, the war slept, and rain filled the cisterns with silence.

Our windows faced east, and on August evenings, the sky was a blue no longer spoken.

— Beirut, winter 1983

In the Exclusion Zones

Ash over conifers and birches, over berry thickets. Resembling snow and its synonyms. Silvered fields of millet.

A silence approaching bees of the invisible or the scent of mint.

One need not go further than a white towel hung in an open door.

Hive

into a light most unexpected the glass hives

executed labors whose writings in a darkness are lost

meanwhile they exhaust the city’s supplies

and live only in the midst however abundant

inaudible to them the murmur that comes to us

song of abundance psalms of grief

an entire absence of hesitation

whereby they break with the past as though with an enemy

it is not without prescience their summoning

as though nothing is happening will come back

to live as long as the world itself in those who come after

too vast to be seen too alien to be understood

prefers what is not yet visible to that which is

as a society organizes itself and rises so does a shrinkage enter

so crowded does the too prosperous city become

the era of revolutions may close and work become the barricade

suddenly abandoning generations to come

the abode of the future wrapped in a shroud

a door standing not now where once it stood

we are so made that nothing contents us

Prayer

Begin again among the poorest, moments off, in another time and place.

Belongings gathered in the last hour, visible invisible:

Tin spoon, teacup, tremble of tray, carpet hanging from sorrow’s balcony.

Say goodbye to everything. With a wave of your hand, gesture to all you have known.

Begin with bread torn from bread, beans given to the hungriest, a carcass of flies.

Take the polished stillness from a locked church, prayer notes left between stones.

Answer them and hoist in your net voices from the troubled hours.

Sleep only when the least among them sleeps, and then only until the birds.

Make the flatbed truck your time and place. Make the least daily wage your value.

Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No one’s mouth.

Bring night to your imaginings. Bring the darkest passage of your holy book.

The recollections of a whole life, the consciousness of spiritual existence, and all which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, become brighter, even in opposition to extreme bodily languor. In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few, very few travelers have returned, and from which those few have brought back but vague remembrances; sometimes accompanied with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they had then some transient prospect. Here, amidst images, dim images, of solemnity or peace, of glory or of terror, the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye.

— George Burgess, 1850

On Earth

“now appears to us in a mysterious light”

“did this happen? could it have happened?”

“everything ahead of her clear for the rest of her life”

“La terre nous aimait un peu je me souviens.”

“I try to keep from wanting the morphine. I pray with both hands.”

“Lima, Alpha, Uniform, November, Charlie, Hotel, Echo, November, Alpha, Bravo, Lima, Echo. Pap. Lima, Charlie, Alpha, Zero, One. Acknowledge. Out.”

“man and cart disappeared in the blast, but their shadows remained on the bridge”

“these diaries a form of weather”

(a future hinting at itself)

(all of this must remain)

(on illness, after radiation; a mysterious illness)

(something) whispering

(the sadness when a hand—)

— with the resistance of a corpse to the hands of the living—

“open the book of what happened”

a barnloft of horse dreams, with basin and bedclothes

a bit of polished quiet from a locked church

a black coat in smoke

a black map of clouds on a lake

a blackened book-leaf, straw and implements

a blue daybook hidden in my bed with his name

a branch weighted with pears

a brittle crack of dawnlight

a broken clock, a boy wakened by his father’s whip, then the world as if whorled into place —

a broken equation, a partita

a bullet clicking through her hair

a bullet-holed supper plate

a burnt room strewn with toy tanks

a century passing through it

a chaos of microphones

a city a thousand years

a city shaken and snowing

a coin of moonlight on the shattered place

a confusion of birds and fishes

a consciousness not within us

a corpse broken into many countries

a cup of sleep

a desire to live as long as the world itself

a door opening another door

a feather forced through black accordioned paper

a field of birds roasted by the heavens

a goodness that must forget itself

a grave strewn with slipper flowers

a groundskeeper’s knowledge of graves

a hole in light, an entrance

a horse grazing in an imaginary field

a horse of wire, wine-corks and wax

a horse tangled in its tether

a hotel haunted by a wedding dress

a house fallen in

a house fallen into itself

a house in time, years from the others, light-roofed, walls shimmering

a hurried life, a knife on newsprint

a lace of recent snow

a language known only to parrots

a life in which nothing is lived

a light, n’y voir que du bleu, blind to something

a litany of broken but remembered events

a little hotel in the city with its windows open

a little invention for sweeping crumbs from the table

a locket’s parted lovers face to face

a man repainting his wooden house in stopped time

a man vanishing while he danced

a man who built cottages for tourists until he went blind

a memory through which one hasn’t lived

a message deflected by other messages

a message from a secret self

a mist of geese rising

a moment of bluesmoke

a moment of sycamores in low mist

a moon caught in the bare hold of firs

a moon haloed in high cirrus

a name which should not be written

a new world, entirely other

a no-longer-beyond

a parcel of copper wire, plastique and a clock

a parrot learning its language from a ghost

a past to come

a phrase shifting epochs

a pinch of salt, a fist of sugar

a plumbago curtain withdrawn from the radiance

a poplar in the sun, a pouch of coins, between layers of sleep where one lives another life beside this, awakening in the grave, brushing mother’s hair in the kitchen

a random life caught in a net of purpose

a record-keeper of human and earthly life

a rifle loaded with moments

a rivulet of sweat on the brow of the one keeping watch

a road erased by light

a road that ends nothing

a salvage yard of burnt office furniture and household goods

a scarf of smoke from a mouth

a schooner sailing in a bottle of light

a scriptorium

a search without hope for hope

a searchlight washing the fields

a secret that stands apart from every secret

a single turn, then years on the same road

a snow of ash risen from winter months

a spiral of being

a spirit gold-breathed, something not made only of

a stairwell spiraling

a stalled ambulance

a steep wooden staircase

a sudden reticence that seizes the heart

a syllable a dove

a taxi and three gunmen

a taxi its four doors open its lights out

a telephone ringing in an empty house

a ticking telex

a traffic jam of refugees on a desert road

a train rounding low sand hills

a veiled window a camera hidden in a loaf of bread

a veiled window where appears a revenant

a walnut box of world and light

a war-eyed woman

a web of survivals

a wind of burnt documents borne by wind

a white rain, then your face becoming another’s

a white road

a white road billowing behind the relief trucks

a white road ending in one’s own life

a whitened eye clouded with gnats

a willow vase, more bedsheets flaring over the furniture

a wind lifting washed linen

a wind-flock of butterflies

a window of grilled hens

a wire fence woven with pine boughs

a woman in a blowing coat on the tarmac

a woman rubbing the mirror until she is gone

a woman sitting on a window ledge as if about to vanish

a word dissolved into the yet-again

a world set in language and deserted

a world thought into being

a wreath on water

a year passing through itself

a yellow mosaic of remains

above a pacific slumber of white houses

above a salon de thé

absent in a garden of watered roses

acres of blue wind

after having gone all the way to the end

after his internment and before his suicide

again and again

against a sea of recriminations

against a winter pine, eating a sparrow

against this, that

air filled with ash, notebooks with sorrowing ink

airfield to airfield

algebraic music

all night the boats calling out

all of them, à-dieu

all questioning to myself

allées of tall trees

alluvial plains

alpha rays of plutonium

although we are a small group on a private tour

America a warship on the horizon at morning

American university T-shirts among the executed

among white birch stands

an ache of such light

an ache of such light fixed in the bone

an anonymous work performed

an authorized death a non-authorized death

an inn for phantoms

an inner tact

an object that disappears from the word

an olive field of ordnance

an ossuary

an oven of birds

ancient light having reached us

and all questions, and all questions about questions

and among the stars, those too distant to be seen

and collective memory a dread of things to come

and for women who desire men

and have left undone

and in the dream Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire

and in the villages laundry hanging for months

and in their eyes the years taken from them

and it is certain someone will be at that very moment pouring milk

and it is supposed that we are describing the world

and its corresponding moment in the past

and night, a knock at the window

and night, a storehouse

and on the battlefield, our anatomy lessons

and phrases like: vanishing pianos

and she body and promising light she exists

and silence the most mysterious form of affection

and standing in phosphorus rain, the man I have not yet married

and that another will be uttering its first human word

and the glass-winged bats hang in the darkness

and the gun though loud has not discharged

and the house? there. which became what it was because of us

and the marigold the flower of worry

and the shell etching a horizon into our window as it passed

and the trains, the way they come, they tell me it is not the truth but I remember it

and time, speeding as it departs

and we fell into each other laughing the laugh of the newly dead

and we, separated on earth by decades

and what intervened more, war or the passage of time?

and what of those who have made this same journey?

and whispering what could

and writing, the guardian of the past

angelica, anne’s lace, antiphon, aria, ash, asylum

another child filling its mouth with pillow

ants in a city of peony

apparition in a vacant house

appears to feel the soul go forth

apple blossoms and wet wind

approaching the other with empty hands

aria in time of war

armfuls of furze, lupine, cornflower

as a flame is linked to its burning coal

as a mirror changes a face

as a rain, however brief, changes the world

as all afternoon the clouds float west to east, leaf-smoke and lake wind, pumice and plumbago gray, white-storeyed, rain-logged

as any backward look is fictive

as any conflagration or struggle is understood

as any new act inflicts its repetition

as crows mark the fog

as for children, so for the dead

as gloves into a grave

as God withdrawing so as to open an absence

as he appears and reappears in the unknown

as if a flock of geese were following

as if there were no other source of food

as if to say goodbye to his own mind

as if we had only one more hour

as if with the future we could replace the past

as in the childhood of terror and holiness

as light or the retreat of light

as memory, a futile attempt

as more beautiful than it had been because it is lost

as rain before it reaches us

as rain strikes the pails in our tents of wakefulness

as the fence has recorded the wind

as the water in which the corpse has been washed

as those who have returned have said

as though when past and present converge, there is a gap

as thought affects the universe in as yet immeasurable ways

as unexpected rain craters the fields

as when cicadas sing at the cenotaph

ascending to the stone-cool stars

ash manuscript, death aria, hunger fugue

ash sailing ashen wind

at once in this world and the world to come

at the city’s edge the aged cooling towers

at the edge of a forest once for making violins

at the end of their journey, the petals they carry vanish

at the end, where they carry his body

at the point where language stops

at the ticket window, and again in the fruit stalls, a kilo of open melon, in the train without stopping, rain of yellow tickets, broken turnstile

at writing’s border, as if memory were of everyone, forgetting no one, such a cold happiness!

awakening dans le vrai

back to the blowing-out of birthday candles

back to the crystal ring of a toast

back to the furl of his shirt in a hot wind

back to the razing of every edifice

balefire, balcony, balm, belief, benediction

bamboos bleached by light

bananas hacked clean on the stalk, tangerines pulled down with their leaves

bare trees in fog, umbrellas opening all at once

barefoot by choice in the thin sea, by choice wearing black cotton

bats hanging from the rafters, long polished corridors open

bats singing along walls

because we cannot emerge

beds in the great open-air sickbay

before and behind us

behind the face that speaks to us and to whom we speak

beings who have chosen one another

bell music rolling down the roofs

between here and here

between hidden points in the soul

between hidden points in the soul born from nothing

between saying and said

beyond what one has oneself done

birchbark curling from the birch limbs

birds dropping from flight leaving cries in the air

birds in the clerestory, a tapestry of broken light

biting hard the fear

black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill a sack

black fingernails, blue hands, lost hair

black storms of dream

black with burnt-up meaning

blessed be a knowledge that burns thought

blood rose and love

blossoming poplars

blossoming walls, a grave digger’s tunic, a newspaper kiosk in rain

blossoms yet again inside us

blue lobelia rising along the gate

blue-leaved lilies

blue-winged roofs and rooflight

boat scraps washed leeward

bone child in the palm a bird in the heart

bone-clicking applause of the winter trees

bones of the unknown

bones smoothed by water

book of smoke, black soup

born with a map of calamity in her palm

both windows open to whatever may happen

bottled light tossed into the sea with no message

bring forth what is within

bring in your whispering harvest

broken clouds return from the past

broken space, ruined birds, death’s heaven

but in a change of worlds you weren’t you

by someone who was not and would not revient

by the time we were face to face

by which we is not the plural of I

Ça ne veut pas rien dire

caged canaries before each shop as if the street were a mineshaft

canticle, casement, casque, cerement, cinder

capable of a fate other than its own

cathedral bells chiseling the winter air

cathedral of shivering light

Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire

certain of thought but not of what is seen

chandeliers in shellfire, chaotic light

charnel house of the innocents

checkpoints, roadblocks, barricades, points of entry

children shouting goodbye in a hot wind

christmas lights in smoke

cinema does not describe this moment

city through the filth of a bus window

clouds of lake water, light and speech

clouds of road behind us

clouds returning to the sky from the past

cocoa, whistling pine, ceiba, ylang-ylang, rain

code for key turns

cognac steadying the night

cold fire-pit

cold stalks of daylily

come, love, through burning

composed of light

converging on my own life

cordite wind, one’s first cordite

corn black in the fields, crib smoke, bones, a rib cage

corrugated fields, sheep on the bare fields of drought

cotton mats spread on the floors of classrooms

countries erased from their maps

cratered memory cratered field

crows took rye scraps from her hands

curtains of rain opening

dark, borne within us

dead woman giving birth to rats

dear Françoise of bravery under fire

death is not the conclusion of earthly life

death is the descent of the one called

décryptage

destroys what it briefly illuminates

detritus reaching through a window washed away by wind

difference which she is not to speak

digging a hole in the floor for no apparent reason

disquiet and the book of disquiet

dissolved into the yet-again

distance measured in space or time

do we interpret the words before we obey the order?

doors opening, stones humming the foretold

dovecote, drum, dust

doves on the gray limbs of winter poplar

down a desert road aerially strafed

drawings doomed to be destroyed by bullets

dreaming nouns remembered until a window

dressed in their shrouds

drinking from cupped hands

dwelling in apartness

each a ring of soot

each day breaking along the cordillera, then broken

each page a window intact until touched

early summer’s green plums

earth singing in her magma chambers

easter lilies opening in

elegiac time

empty windows dipped in milk

enigma, escritoire, estuary

enough seen. enough had. enough

even if by forgetting

even if he is thousands of miles away or dead

even the trembling of souls turning into light

every line in his face the river of a single year

except to be gentle with one who loved you mistakenly and very much

expectation, the presence of the not-yet-exiled from itself

filled with lifelong gratitude

fire of human becoming

fired from the tip of the only possible

fireflies above the graves, time collapsing, your name which should not have been in stone in stone

firing into the air five nights in the shelter

firmament, fissure, flare stars, frottage

flags opening in wind

flatbread like a stack of plates on his arm

flocks of geese marching in formation down a dust road

flowering trees: trumpet, bottlebrush, cassia, frangipani, flame, sea grape

flowers rotting on mounds: air plant, allamanda, amaryllis, spider lily, bougainvillea, shellflower, hibiscus, ashanti blood, trumpet vines, oleander

for the rest of your life, search for them

for the words that would not come

forward to a rope from his arm to the post

forward to a wedding-cake knife in our hands

forward to the blindfold

forward to the list of demands

fountains of dust rising out of the hills

fragments from the Second Brandenburg

fresh wind in the linens

from a gloved hand a flaming bottle

from chance to chance, event to event

from earth to satellite, event to event

from our last train ride through the ricefields

from the cathedral comes Kyrie

garbage fires along the picket lines

gasoline coupons and rations, an event no longer remote

Georg leaning against the winter pine eating a sparrow

ghost hands appearing in windows, rubbing them clear

ghost swift, grisaille, guardian spirit

God not a being but a force, and humans, the probative tip of that becoming

God withdrawn from the world

gourds, relief sacks loaded into trucks, poles, rags, tents

graves marked with scrap iron, a world in her dead eye

grief of leave-taking

ground fog rising from a graveyard

had gathered to die

had it changed?

had undergone subtle and perilous shiftings

half-tracks and yellow-eyed transports, and behind them a long road

happens when you say yes

happiness without fulfillment

having made herself stand she was at rest

hayloft, hillock, hoarfrost, hush

he is from exile, which is in all of them

he listened to Schubert, Tosca

he saw nothing of what was to come

he told her how, in those years

he, though alive, was no longer

her amnesia an approach to understanding her life

her face the war years

her hair a banner of rain

her hands blue in the well

her wet skirt wrapping her legs

hills thinning at the world’s edge

his absence fills with passing clouds, the script of birds, and schoolchildren’s voices

his ashen hands having passed through the window of his truck

his can of dark tobacco, his yellow finch in a cage

his footsteps disappearing as he walked

his grave strewn with slipper flowers and sardine cans

his hands, detritus reaching through a window washed away

his words sparkling in the raw air

history branded with the mark of uncertainty

history decaying

history decaying into images

horse clearing an obstacle

horses, poppies, trees with trunks like sycamores and leaves like maples

hot, the hurry of stars

hour of no matins

house of being

how abandoned how left behind

how better to account for my life

how did this happen? how it always happens.

how it reads its past

how secretly you died for years, on behalf of all who wished for themselves a private death

how the soul becomes an inhabitant of flesh

I am alone, so there are four of us

I am here, blowing into my hands, you are in the other coffin

I can’t possibly get away, she said

I lit a taper in the Cathédrale St-Just, a two-franc candle, birds flying in the dome

I remember standing next to his bed

I see myself in their brass coat-buttons but not in their eyes

I stand on the commode for a glimpse of it

I tried once. it was just before the war, and she had no time for me. I can’t possibly get away

I was to bring him music for the left hand

idam agnaye, na mama

idam agnaye, na mama (this is for the fire, not for me)

if he exists to another, that is need

if rope were writing he would have hanged himself

if you ask him what happened he will tell you

if you bring forth what is within you

in a bowl polished by the morning light

in a village where the women know how to piss standing up

in carceral silence

in glimpses, broken messages, cryptic signs

in his address book, a pressed poppy chosen from his mother’s poppy bed

in his coat, a small cage of canaries

in his hand a clod of himself to wipe on the walls

in memory: the music of an open spigot

in reverse until you were floating in a flat green boat

in solitary reverie we can tell ourselves everything

in stone is written in stone

in the bardo of becoming

in the black daybreak, passing through

in the casket window, a face

in the cellar, three crates: rifles, gold & cognac

in the cesium fields

in the chaotic light in the coal-smoked heavens

in the cities of what can be said

in the country of advanced years

in the ecstasy of standing outside oneself

in the fact of parting

in the garden: heliotrope, phlox, rose trees, trellised roses, blue torenia, hibiscus, blue lobelia, lichen, a bamboo grove

in the garden in winter with my son

in the mathematical language of a time to come

in the morning, a white shirt on the line waving

in the night photograph: electric cities, burning forests

in the pole-and-rag tents

in the still-bandaged pines

in the summer, weeds took over the city: horse weeds known as railway weeds grew taller than people

in the surround of that word

in the time after

in the tin lamp’s punched light

in the toy store, a parcel of toys explodes

in the white infinity of mist

in the window a veil of winter

in their radiance a tub of dry milk

in this camp, how many refugees

in this the child’s blue hour

in thought, where they were lost

incapable of imagining annihilation

inhabiting a body to be abolished

inter alia, inter nos

intercessor

into a duration deep within her

into the world, further illuminated by thought

iris, illuminant

is there anything else?

it appears to be an elegy, put into the mouth of a corpse

it became what it was because of us — in that sense loved

it is as if space were touching itself through us

it is more ominous than any oblivion, to see the world as it is

it is not possible to find you in death’s heaven

it is not raining in the catacombs

it is not you who will speak

it is the during of the world

it is the morning of the body’s empty soul

it is worse than memory

it ruins time, the chiasmus of hope

it was all over

it was all there, written in stone, a record of munitions

it was cinema

it was gruel refused: blue wedges of bread, maggot soup, rice drippings

it was just before the second war, and she had no time for me

it was raining in the catacombs

it was the first time in my life I tasted fish

it was the name of a time, and over there, a place

it was the simplest way to know one another

J’ai rêvé tellement fort de toi

J’ai tellement marché tellement parlé

journey of two thousand kilometers

journey that will have no end

keeping a record of oneself

keepsake, knell, Kyrie

knowing oneself from within

l’heure bleue, hour of doorsteps lit by milk

le musée hypothétique

lace patterned after frost flowers

language from chance to chance

languid at the edge of the sea

lays itself open to immensity

leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers along the road

left everything left all usual worlds behind

library, lilac, linens, litany

lifting the wounded

light and the reverse of light

light impaled on the peaks

light issuing from the wind’s open wounds

light mottling the forest floor, crows leaving one limb for another

light of cinder blocks, meal trays

light of inexhaustible light

lighted paper sacks sent downriver to console

like the handkerchief road

like the whispering in a convent garden

like tomb flowers, the ossuary’s skull works

lilac and globeflower, clouds islanding the tilled fields

linked as flame to burning coal, as one candle lighted from another

listening to the stove mice and chimney swallows

little rain holes where the bullets went, rains crater the field, raising each a ring of soot, striking the catch pails and stabbing the tarpaulin.

we live in fog tents, awake, whispering what could once be written on a sliver of rice

lost in paper, shellfire

lupine wind, lingering daylight

lute music written for severed hands

manuscripts in the cold part of the house

matchbooks flaring in a blank window

matinal, mirage, mosaic

meaning did not survive that loss of sequence

memory does not interfere

memory the presence of the no-more

metal soup pots hung to dry, crazed porcelain basins

mirrors, vials, furnaces

misprision of moments lifted from their concealment

moments of rain ascend in the manner of smoke

more ominous than any oblivion

mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears

mud from the bowels of the city

mud from the disheveled night

music loosening floor tiles, a moon washed in earthly light, the dawn sirens calling men to the mines

music of the hurrying fountains

must release the dead from bondage

must rise from the dead while we live

my dear, I think yes

my father crossed the field and stood

my hair a cold flag of rain

my hands coated with tomb dust

my mother’s hand broken by a fierce wind

my own: I was utterly there. and when I came back I was still there

naked beneath our names, thrown up by the wit-lost

near dawn, near the river wasn’t it? if one of us

near the lake, where the fireweed was

neither a soul nor a body

neither for us nor near itself

never repeating itself

nevertheless, noumenon, november

new pasts, whole aeons are invented

night shift in the home for convalescents

nightshirt, razor strop, boot-heel

night-voiced viola

no breath of God, no words, and no possibility of restoration

no content may be secured from them

no one prayer resembling another

not a house but a stagnant hour

not blood, flesh and bread but an earthly ecstasy

not isolation but a lack of solitude

not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest

not wishing to know anything more about oneself

nothing as it was

nothing other than mind

nothing was exiled from itself

now and again like a voice grown suddenly tired

now on the plane in a white-out

objects [heavenly bodies] as they were in the past

oder nicht

oil soap, orchard, ossuary

old books snowing from our hands

older than clocks and porcelain, younger than rope

older than glass, younger than music

on each tip of grass a wet jewel

on her hand, a moment of ring-light

on lave les corps, on les prépare pour l’ensevelissement

on the blanket then, government issue

on the fifty-fourth day, loss of sight and hearing

on the platform between trains, holding a bottle

on the shortwave, the high whine of the world’s signal

one for the other

one sees and is seen

one sees and is seen approaching the other with empty hands

one stands in line for butter

only the walls that did not face the blast remained white

open shell of heaven

or a failed letter

or that she would admonish me for the years of my silence

or when it first occurred to them to have graves with markers

our atelier of passing trains, citronella smoke, a veiled bed

our hymnic song against death

our most secret selves

past and present sliding into each other

pear trees espaliered along the walls

pen and ink across the boundaries

pink snow downwind of the test site

pinning their intentions to a saint’s dress

pitch smoke chalks the sky over the roof

poppy seed, portal, portrait, prayerbook

present though most often invisible

question after question

quiescent, quiet, quinine, quivering

rain falling into their open eyes

rain in the catacombs

raising each a ring of soot

redemption not an accounting or a debt

refugee, relic, reverie

relief sacks loaded into trucks

relief tents until the horizon

remaining in fear of death but remaining

responsible beyond our intentions

resting language or language under surveillance

reverses itself as we read it

riddles the statues of martyrs and turns

rinses limbs then craters the field

rinses limbs then

rises as wet smoke

rising in bodily light

roads rivered with waste and a tea-colored rain

sacks of soy and manioc, dry milk, rice

sanctuary, sea glass, sorrow

scoop of earth: slivers of femur, metacarpals

searching for something one knows will not be found

set in language and deserted by God

she heard no one’s footsteps, then nothing

she holds lilacs to her face

she meets a man on the mule-steps who has been dead for months

she pulled the lilacs to herself

she puts the rice pot down in the snow

she sees nothing of what is to come

she went with him willingly and without knowing where she was, she saw the country very much as she would have had she walked through a film about herself

she within me

she would never again wander too far into the past

sheltering in the open

shore birds, smoke, the ferris wheel turning

signature by signature in triplicate, rice and dry milk

since last night on the bridge

six hours under fire along the road

six inches from my belly

sixteen clicks after the flag of fire

slow questioners, there was no place in the world for them

smacking the hands of children who miswrote

small talk like white smoke from kindling

snow clicking as it falls into itself, hushed, a little smoke crawling from a stovepipe, following the wind or rising straight, the village so quiet that one can hear the iced branches

snow in the shadow folds, impasto, gouache

snow on the shoulders of the statuary

so as not to take a single word into my mouth

so as to be taken for refugees

so emptiness cannot harm emptiness

so it appears as if it were what we wanted

so that the dead climb up out of the river to blacken its banks

so that the other comes back

so this is how the past begins—

so we walked, pretending our empty suitcases burdened us

some dance, one holds a dove aloft

some flaw in the message itself

some were burned with cigarettes, some doused with turpentine. every night they poured turpentine through their hair and slept like that, so as to keep the leeches from giving them head wounds

some with wicker baskets, others with gathered flax, some with children in their arms, others with brooms, some dance, others hold aloft a dove someone will be pouring milk while another perishes

something broken and personal, a memory

something holding back the pouring, a turn of the kaleidoscope, a turn again, radiant, beautiful, meaningless so it is easier to choose stones from the ground, a sack of words, pieces of language from something larger, and if a single event caused this ruin, what was that event? what made night a country of terror?

something within me is no longer with him

snow catching on razor wire, searchlit fields

snow through open windows

soul on its way toward earth

sparks of holiness

spoken in unknown words of a known language

stepping back into an earlier life

strands of hair, blood, corpuscled light

streets iced with shop-glass, a flock of stones

stripped trees against winter fields

take no words by mouth

tangled lilacs, peeling walls, darkening lindens

tedium taught me an imaginary world

tendril, torpor, tributary

that even this refuge might be taken:

that ing-ing of verbs in an eternal present

that light traveled from the eye to the world

that nothingness might not be there

that you might become one among others

the after-touching memory of relief

the air around the ringing bells filled with ash

the being that lies half open

the birds became smoke

the blue whorling that once spoke

the blue-stoned streets of river rock

the boiling, sudden clouds of August

the border. anywhere. but the war zone. mattresses roped to the roof

the boundless etcetera of indifference

the breath of the invisible

the bridge that doesn’t touch the other bank

the buildings of the center city no longer

the candlelit stairwells in blackout

the cedared hills, smoking orchards, and the rivers of ill luck

the cemetery workman’s wheelbarrow

the chandelier of water against stone

the chorus of mules and roosters, goat bells, little cries

the cinema, trip-wired, the small-arms fire

the click, night

the click, night, pages turned by a wind and taken

the confessions written in gunpowder and spit

the danger of premature good conscience

the dawn sky at morning pearl and smoke, the trees stripped

the day has not yet come

the day will of all days be ordinary, its weather various

the dead were left among the living — there were no questions

the dead were washed and dressed and touched

the densissimus imber of the rain

the dreams are a coffin with an open window

the dreams of a mind in the grave

the early summer’s green plums

the empty wet shirts on the line waving

the endless, unbroken lines

the evacuation of ghosts

the flautist’s breath in a stairwell

the flumes of white phosphorus marking the city

the for and for

the forbidden world hidden behind it

the four-a.m. bombing of a newspaper office

the fragility of social orders

the furthest edge

the future destroying us

the ganglia of a train map, metastasizing cities

the going-forth, the as-yet-cannot-be-heard

the greater and lesser wings the ground luminosity

the hand moving of its own accord across the page

the happy life life itself

the hidden world and its inhabitants

the hole of my mouth

the hole where my ancestor stands burning

the house, a white portrait of our having fled

the hushed chill of such a wind

the I’s time, in which things happen

the ice of reminiscence submerged in time

the immigrant disappearing into a new language

the informant’s diary of his whereabouts

the ivory of ice on the rivers

the japonica’s shadow on a telegraph pole

the life that would have ended then goes on

the light in these old photographs is a palm of rice

the light of a pocket mirror moving through trees

the little notebook of poems in the pocket of a corpse

the Lumière camera

the man tipping his hat sadly

the man tipping his hat sadly as if to say goodbye to his own mind

the mirror in her eyes giving himself back

the moon a bone-cap of ice or ivory

the moon in its clearing

the morning’s cold light on the blankets

the mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears

the name I am becoming

the nine lights of thought

the open well ending in its moon of water

the opening of time

the past is white near the sea

the past, which is our present

the peace of a black-windowed warehouse

the peace of the hay

the pleroma which she did not desire for herself

the plummet of a star from its darkness

the question speaks the very language of lack

the rain falls lightly now

the rescuers lift from the wreckage a child no longer a child

the revenant whispers: forgive me if I am wrong but I could not sleep

the roads issuing mist

the roads rivered with sewage and tea-colored rain

the roofs have fallen, field flowers grow in the rooms. nevermind

the same clicking of bare limbs in wind

the same rose sold to every mourner

the secret police having risen to the stature of petty thieves

the sedimentary years

the shacks of le quartier de la guerre

the silence of a new language

the soft houses of heaven

the soldiers’ moonlit helmets

the soul cannot leave the body of a suicide until she comes

the soul weighs twenty-six grams and is migratory like the birds

the soul, enamored of greatness

the soul with its sense of destination, the soul exiled, a stranger to earth

the space between events infinite

the stench of soap boiling at the edge of a village

the sting of bleached linen

the stony space where all of this happens

the stories nested, each opening to the next

the story of empty rice sacks

the street’s memory of abandoned shoes

the streets running with a sweet gray stench

the sun a monstrance

the sun moving toward Lambda Herculis

the sun will turn into a red giant, and then into a white dwarf

the sweet stench of gangrene, a cloud of flies, in its hand a child’s necropolis

the temptation of temptation

the three hidden lights beyond the grasp of thought

the tomb into which we escape

the trains. sometimes a silent coupling

the trees: almond, annatto, sweetsop, banana, monkey-bread, bay rum, sandal bead, breadfruit, yellowsilk, camphor, candle

the trees mortared into flower

the trembling of river stones, the ignition of spirit, the firing of human thought

the trip wire in white grass at one with the footfall, the latch

the truck-rutted fields the burnt sorrow

the twenty-two bones of the skull

the uncertain hand of a lost spirit

the vanished present visible on earth

the wall of white sand and poisonous mill wastes

the way one could bathe while still covered by a square of cloth

the wet paper of flesh draped on brittle bone

the what is? gives the wrong answer

the what is? has ruined thought

the white train

the white-boned noon

the window covered with a wool blanket

the woman in the flowered robe mad with fear

the woman in your arms a lighted bedcloth

the world an accident

the world as it emerges

the world’s ensouling in a gallery of sadness

their bedclothes soaked in music

their bruises, aubergine

their refusal to accompany us further

their souls exist as their body

their souls shuttered against hope

then at dawn through the cedars

then for an hour we slip photographs from their frames, strip the walls, toss what had been our life into shipping crates

then phosphorus fell silver on the city and rained on the lettuce fields

there is a reason you have lost him. for the rest of your life you could search for it

there is no absence that cannot be replaced

there is no reason for the world

there was black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill the sack

there was no when there

there was nothing that wasn’t for sale

these are my contents

these paving stones this hymnal

these ruins are to the future what the past is to us

they bind them in rags

they climb out of the river and blacken its banks

they died along with anyone who knew who they were

they fell from heaven to earth

they go on past grief and give me a sack of beans

they lived in the carcass of the sports coliseum

they looked into the camera, into the future

they will gladly go to the precipice, but where is the precipice?

thinking against the world

this end and the beginning within it

this is a musée hypothétique:

this is a transit camp, a squatters’ camp

this is how things were for us then

this is the city. this is a photograph of the city

this is the city. this was the city

this only death can write

this open-air asylum

this ossuary of world, what is the phrase for it?

this reversal

this shattering of indifference

this sudden incipience of event—

those things are obvious which are invisible

those who have entered and have left unharmed

thoughts turned back into ink and paper

throwing light upon light

time—“a severe border guard”—becomes imaginary

time lapsed in one country is only beginning in another

time, to which we are exiled

to abandon yearning for the body

to be unquiet

to be visible to oneself

to become endlessly what one has been

to cross the field without breaking the snow

to enter into itself and to stay awake

to expose ourselves to whatever may happen

to forget once having known it

to hide, safeguard, entrust to a protected place

to know not only what is, but the other of what is

to know that the great bell is the great bell

to remain haunted

to rescue the future

to say nothing without confining ourselves to silence

to search like a sheep for salt

to see or to perish

to see other than from without

to see the world as it actually is

to walk the quays among the executed

to where a drawn lamb is hanging beheaded

today the world is stiff and locked in place, pines still, skies droning, snow mounded, and everyone has gone “to work”

together into the blue but unbroken perishing

too many bones in too small a soul

torn curtain, shutters in wind

toward what end? what uniformity?

tunneling between worlds

twirling organdy dresses waving goodbye

two children in his arms

two discontinuous realms

un enfant qui meurt, wrapped in a trouser leg

under the blind sky’s surveillance

under the whip, invisible, in the not-there

under what conditions can we speak of

une enfant qui meurt wrapped in a trouser leg

unspeakable in language

unspoken thoughts, leaving us in their proximity, alone

until dawn in the fire tower

until this, that

vesture, vigil light, votive

visible only to God

walking the streets, tented in bedclothes

war-eyed in the warehouse of history

war no longer declared but only continued

warning us of its nature and our own

washing its windows until they vanish

was this not to know me?

watch them appear to recede: what are we seeing?

water calm to the wind line

water rosy with iron

waters filled with human belief

watery cathedral, a gold wash of light, a trembling—

we are as paper against the walls of the passage

we caused each other

we drove through disappearing villages

we hid among tangerine peels, lamb bones and blue figs

we lived in tents of fog

we returned to the border and walked toward the checkpoint

we take our citron pressé, your hand mine, and the clocks spin in reverse until you are floating in a flat green boat

we take our worldly goods, your hand, mine, and the clocks spin

we were spoken into being

were we not?

wet bouquets at the kiosk

wet paper of our flesh

what crawled out of the autumn wood was dementia

what did we retrieve? empty spectacles?

what do these questions ask?

what do we have to forget?

what end? what uniformity?

what fragmentary light?

what God does or does not forgive

what is closest to us

what is it? must be answered who is it?

what sees us without being seen

what waking life is to the dream

what was before, imperfectly erased

what were we doing as far away as this?

what you see is the beginning of life after death

what you see you shall become

when did we know?

when I opened the door

when it was possible to walk across the river

when one could hear, behind the curtain, the whole thing

when the thing had gone beyond the limits of a room

when this sunlight reaches the future

when time seems to us a queer thing

when we wake from our deaths

when you know the worst, you can return to cut stalks of iris in April

where at least one loveliness wanders

where else would they have fallen?

where everything destroyed was left intact

where he looked

where the helicopters landed, lifting trees from the ground

where the ore is crushed into yellowcake

where the sickness knew us

where there is some message to convey

where they go without sleep

where thinking takes place we have a right to say

while I lived in that other world, years went by in this one

while out on the cobalt sea the ship turns toward us

while we watched transfixed the repetitive novelty of death

who cries for the jasmin as he digs them up, and carries with him a can of black tobacco and a yellow finch in a cage

who if rope were writing would have hung himself

who in mirrors saw a strange woman

who no longer realized I was there

who returns from the journey with her eyes ruined

who wanted only to retrieve a few invisible souvenirs:

who wrote on the window in lipstick I will never forget you

whose white hands lift from this river the sudden flight of cranes

why do I seem no longer alive?

wide-planed wind of the sea

wild doves in a warehouse

willow, windthrow, winter, wisteria

wind etching the walls

wind singing in the chimney

windows X’d against fire

windshield wipers clearing a wedge of water

wisteria floating along the fence

with a camera hidden in a loaf of bread

with empty suitcases, pretending to be refugees

with how much uncertainty they told it

with revolutionary hope we searched, believing

with the flurry of a dovecote

without passing through thought

without personal history or desire for selfhood

without so much as a biscuit tin of water

without wandering too far into the past

woman in black holding daisies in paper

woman in mourning black with baskets of lemons and eggs

wood crates of cognac and ordnance

wooden crosses in snow

words burning in the windows

words carried by countless mouths

work shoes, soda cans, holy braided palm

world without having been

world without origin

would return to the point of departure

would reveal itself as other than chance

writing, an anguished wind

written over an open grave

x does not equal

yet the women dancing with white scarves

yet the women veiled in cirrus

you are the ghost through whom we see the wall

you come to earth in your sorrows

you, leaping tall fields, cornflower and milk

you might be the revenant of the earliest years, you might be within

you must leave, you cannot remain here, you must leave at once

you spit out your teeth, give it up

you will see the generation into which you should have been born

your churches will warehouse weapons and wheat

your freedom is an abyss

your hand awkward between us in the absence of love

your heart in the guise of mysterious words

your light narrow coffin

your mother waving goodbye in the flames

your notebooks, the sorrow of ink

your things have been taken

your things have been taken away

zero

May 2001

Afterdeath

from the quarry of souls they come into being

supernal lights, concealed light, that which has no end

that which thought cannot attain

the going-forth, the as yet cannot be heard

— as a flame is linked to its burning coal

to know not only what is, but the other of what is

Notes

“Blue Hour” When my son was an infant in Paris, we woke together in the light the French call l’heure bleue, between darkness and day, between the night of a soul and its redemption, an hour associated with pure hovering. In Kabbalah, blue is hokhmah, the color of the second sefirah. In Tibetan Buddhism, the hour before dawn is associated with the ground luminosity, or “clear light,” arising at the moment of death. It is not a light apprehended through the senses, but is said to be the radiance of mind’s true nature.

Everything in the world has a spirit released by its sound.

— John Cage to Oskar Fischinger, 1984

“In the Exclusion Zones” refers to the thirty-kilometer radius of contaminated lands immediately surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

“Hive” is after Maurice Maeterlinck.

“On Earth” was written during the spring of 2001.

Gnostic abecedarian hymns date from the third century A.D. Along with Christian and Buddhist texts, they were recovered from small towns on the northern fringe of the Taklamakan Desert early in the twentieth century. The texts were written in seventeen languages, including Sogdian and Tocharian, as well as Aramaic and the “Estrangelo script,” a script for Syriac.

appears to feel the soul go forth

— Lucretius, De rerum natura (translated by W. H. Mallock)

a knowledge that burns thought

— Maurice Blanchot

I am alone, so there are four of us

— Gaston Bachelard

La terre nous aimait un peu je me souviens

— René Char

behind the face that speaks to us and to whom we speak

— Emmanuel Levinas

black with burnt-up meaning

— Julia Kristeva

Ça ne veut pas rien dire: this does not mean nothing

Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire: this journey I wanted to make again

dans le vrai: in the midst of things

enough seen. enough had. enough

— Arthur Rimbaud

idam agnaye, na mama: this is for the fire, not for us.

— Vedic mantra

Il n’y a pas d’absence irremplaçable: there is no absence that cannot be replaced

— René Char

J’ai rêvé tellement fort de toi / J’ai tellement marché tellement parlé: I have dreamed so strongly of you / I have walked so much, talked so much

— attributed to Robert Desnos

not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest

— Walter Benjamin

oder nicht: or not

on lave les corps, on les prépare pour l’ensevelissement: one washes the bodies, one prepares them for burial

pleroma: fullness, plenitude; in Gnostic theology, the spiritual universe as the abode of God and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations

musée hypothétique: hypothetical museum

— after the painter Ashley Ashford-Brown, of Ivry-sur-Seine

the very language of lack

— Edmond Jabès

une enfant qui meurt: a child who dies

zero: also the “pure zero” of C. S. Peirce’s semiotic metaphysics

With gratitude to my editor, Terry Karten; my literary agent, Virginia Barber; the poets Frank Bidart, Robert Creeley, Barbara Cully, Forrest Gander, Louise Glück, Lise Goett, Ellen Hinsey, Fanny Howe, Ilya Kaminsky, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Honor Moore, Michael Palmer, Robert Pinsky, Lloyd Schwartz, C. D. Wright; and, as ever, my friend Svetozar Daniel Simko and my dear husband, Harry Mattison, for readings of this work during its making.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to J. Patrick Lannan and Lannan Foundation for the support that made this book possible, and also to Robert and Peggy Boyers, editors of Salmagundi, where “Blue Hour” and “Nocturne” were originally published, and Michael Ondaatje and Linda Spalding, publishers of Brick, where “Afterdeath” and “Refuge” first appeared.

Content

Carolyn Forche
Blue Hour

Sequestered Writing

Blue Hour

Curfew

Nocturne: an elegy

Refuge

Writing Kept Hidden

In the Exclusion Zones

Hive

Prayer

On Earth

Afterdeath

Notes

Acknowledgments