memories. I lay in a perambulator.
six to nine months. On my right were two horses—
the brown one was staring at me
very intently
(I had the feeling
it was someone I knew)
The plane trees were
quiet yet articulate;
the horse would speak but could not.
memories. I hovered in
one year old. syringa’s meager shade
where the keeper cupped
a little bird. Its eyes looked
back into mine, I felt
frightened when he said
this is a creature like yourself
animals. It was not until the war
being slaughtered. that I learned to eat meat,
and now I am learning to
do without it again.
My mother was confined
and I heard her cry out.
I had the feeling of
an animal in distress.
I have a very keen sense
of smell, with my eyes bandaged
I can pick out by smell
people I hardly know.
recurrent dream. I saw a tongue of land
breakers had hemmed in.
a woman sprawled with arm
wound around the stem
of a palm. With her
left hand she reached
towards a swimmer;
the foam hid all
but neck and skull.
You saw his eyes?
Only once, under
paraldehyde–
but can’t recall–
paternity. In burbs of F______ a telegram
arrived as father did
in time enough and light enough
to cut a catapult from elm
or make a nickel disappear.
Both impressed his eldest girl
with all the worries that arose
from his “lack of earning power.”
Once I’d left behind
the rigid and passionate
character of youth, I grew
a regular mirror of virtue–
marriage. And grew to be a loving wife
though bearing only ghosts—
barren as Rachel, I supposed.
From the well’s mouth, roll a stone.
At the hour of twilight
on the eve of operation
I was a dimness seeking flame.
What word obscured, lamps could not light.
The failing spark–the shame–
was his. Naturally I suffered
a temporary collapse–
which I vainly sought to hide.
an incident. Three paths were open to me,
all equally impassable:
unfaithfulness (cf. paternity)
renunciation of the ghosts,
or legal separation.
All equally impassable.
I used to fasten [anstecken]
sheets with safety pins, revealing
my husband’s contagion [ansteckung]
dreams. Telepathy comes upon us,
distant yet invasive,
neither swallowed nor expelled.
An amber foal’s carcass
or weak sun on cold fields
can, after all, portend itself.
cephalophore. The problem of belief:
to be as St. Denis
who stooped to lift
his severed head
on martyr’s hill
and staggered yet some way
(archive held at arm’s length).
The first step’s hard–
the rest easy.
in the grave. When shall we be done changing?
What word obscured
by fastened sheets
repeats
melisma of misery
albaalbaalbaalbaalba
baal rises–in what whiteness–
