Light Moves 1
Mineral light and whale
light,
light of memory, light of
the eye,
memory’s eye, shaded amber
light
coating the page, fretted
light of anarchy, flare of
bent
time, firelight and first
light,
lake light and forest
light,
arcing harbor light,
spirit light and light of
the blaze,
enveloping blaze,
century’s fading light,
light of cello, voice,
drum,
figures billowing along
horizon, aligned,
outlined.
Light
Moves 2
Bright light of sleep, its
shortness of breath, its
thousand sexual suns,
curved
and fretted light, lies of
that light,
dark, inner light, its
whispered words:
Now beyond, now below,
this to left, this to right,
scarecrow in stubble field,
nighthawk on wire,
these to cleanse your sight.
Light
Moves 3
Light through the Paper
House
rippling across floors and
walls,
across the words of the
walls,
its paper tables, paper
chairs,
its corners,
pale light by which it
reads itself,
fills and empties itself,
and speaks.
Light
Moves 4
Watcher on the cliff-head
in afternoon light,
aqueous light,
watcher being watched
in the salt-silver light
amidst the darting of
terns,
beach swallows and gulls,
between the snow of sand
and the transit of clouds,
keeper of thought or
prisoner of thought,
watcher being watched,
snowman of sand,
anonymous man.
Light
Moves 5
Night-sun and day-sun
twinned and intertwined,
light by a bedside,
cat’s eye by night,
owl light and crystal
light,
endless motion of the
light,
the rise and the fall,
the splintered flare,
churning northern lights,
phosphor, tip of iris,
gunmetal moon’s
far, reflected light,
oil sheen
on pelican’s wing.
Light
Moves 6
And yet what have we done
where have we gone
sometimes in light
sometimes not
traveling
we say the great world the
small world
the fields
patched with yellow the
sudden crows
the city’s streets
alone among others
the billowing streets
bodies crowding past
outlined by light.
What have we done
among the roads and fields
in the theater’s shadows
and the theater’s light
so bright you cannot see
those watching beyond
in perfect rows in the
dark.
(in homage to Jackson
MacLow)
In
Memory of Ivan Tcherepnin
So many sounds flower but
they are not flowers.
They are mangled girders
in a field,
a field of flowers, echo
of hooves,
heavy-metal of tanks,
music’s lost memory.
In the enveloping mist
our shoes squealing
upon the paving stones
while winding through
your Paris
which one of us said,
The absolute
secret of art
lies in the tongue
of a shoe?
Who said, The true
secret of art
resides in the gaze
of a cat,
and that’s that?
Which one of us asked,
Is this the buried sound
of the future-past?
Do electrons still sing
when no one is listening?
(A little stoned perhaps?)
We spoke of corpses
waving batons, hierophants
professing poems,
as the mist cloaked our
words
and mid-summer night
measure by measure
finally arrived.
Ivan Alexandrovich,
is it only the fugitive
things
that ravel the cells
and ring through the air,
le va et le vient as you put it,
the slow rise of a
half-step,
followed by falling
semi-tones,
in a day of one birth and
one death?
So many sounds flower but
they are not flowers.
They are street calls and
cries
and the promises of bone,
and the bright sightless
eye
at the flower’s brief
heart.
At
the Tomb of Artaud
At the tomb of Artaud
wherever it may be
we hear a howl,
unmistakable,
the howl of a wounded wolf
gnawing at its foreleg
caught in the teeth
of a hunter’s steel trap
At the tomb of Artaud
wherever it may be
a sleeper and his double
throw dice made of bone
Should the dice fall
just so, they explain
it will snow
on the tomb of Artaud
Should they fall
otherwise
the earth will be dry
A dancer and her double
make love
on the bright stones
the light bringers
by the tomb of Artaud
that has become a book
of stone
they care not to read
whatever it may mean
as the fitful
iridescent
dragonflies alight
on the wet heat
of their bodies
Only later
will they piss on his
grave
as a clock without hands
applauds in the dark
[NOTE> Michael Palmer is an internationally celebrated poet with numerous
publications, translations into multiple languages, & active collaborations
with dancers & artists over a span of more than forty years. His latest book, The Laughter of the Sphinx, from which these poems are taken, is
scheduled for publication by New Directions later this year. The dedicatory nature of the poems shown here
– to two poets & the French composer Ivan Tcherepnin – indicates Palmer’s sense of presence within “that company I always hear as I work, and for whom I write, and to
whom I write.” The lyric force of his
later poetry is a turning that illuminates the power of the work that came
before.
n.b.
“At the Tomb of Artaud” first appeared in an issue of The American
Reader, volume 2, number 2, some
months back, and the poem for Ivan Tcherepnin is scheduled for the next issue
of Nathaniel Mackey’s magazine Hambone.]
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