Jeromerothenberg/ariegalles
For some time now I’ve been working with Arie Galles on Graffite, a three-part series of graphite drawings with poem accompaniments: MoonFields, CloudPoems & PepperTree, in that order. Here, with the exception of MoonFields (abstract circles & lines), Galles’s images begin as black & white photographs that he then translates, as with his monumental 14 Stations, into three sets of twenty graphite drawings each, to which are added twenty poems of mine as linkages. My own procedures, after the fact, are largely improvisational, speaking to his images while maintaining a sense of distance & independence. To borrow from the medieval Japanese, the principle here is not one of direct comment or illustration but of something like juxtaposition &/or collage “wherein it does not matter that the upper and lower part are put together in a seemingly unnatural & arbitrary way so long as they cohere in the mind.” In the dance between us, it is he who leads and I who follow, hopefully always in synch. (J.R.)
PART ONE
TWENTY MOON FIELDS
“I was on the terrace, wrestling with the Moon”
– F.G. Lorca
1
a knife falls
in the water
grows a second knife
& over each knife
looms an eye –
my second eye trails off
2
life has spirit, death
has only chalk
with chalk a word
is written
but not by you
3
end it here,
the man says
as he puts his thumb on it
the thumb is raw,
behold,
the man is even now alone
4
easy sleep
easy rest
easier to be an animal
than not
5
after Nerval
like inserting two pictures
in a single viewer
(he writes)
then moving my hand as if
sketching my signature
6
directions
rub this side of the chain
against that side
how many years before
the chain rubs out?
7
death has a taste
after we hear of it
a man’s taste
or a woman’s
a child’s taste
or a cat’s
8
someone slips below the sod
the grass grows over him
as if someone has died,
but no one stops to ask
9
a future poetics
with inspiration vanished
respiration took its place
is expiration next?
10
there is something
we like to hide
if not our tongues,
our eyes
if not our immortal souls,
our daily vices
11
easy sleep
easy rest
easier to be an animal
than not
12
go inside
look around you
come back out again
13
a rabbit sneezes with the desperation of a man
a knife drops inward with the sound of water
14
everything is possible
meaning nothing
and if nothing is possible
everything is too
15
clap hands together
never forget
the lessons taught you
the value of a song
16
the place of resistance
has moved away from us
so that we’re running to keep up
& stumble
17
as many people
will be murdered this year
as were murdered
the year before
18
there is a constant
at the heart of things
that serves to keep
the universe in motion
19
the resistance is all the moon that’s left to us
20
the spirit of the dead
means nothing
[To Be Continued]
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