I seek the true poet of our language, who will compel me to rage, find peace, celebrate, hurt, love, hate, admire, wonder, in brief, he will control the reins of my affections, spinning me here and there at his pleasure.
Joachim du Bellay, Défense et illustration de la langue française
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.
James Joyce, Ulysses
It’s trembly words in the midst of ashen
debris / Ulysses takes stock [Remember cir-
cumstance!] Asks himself
Begins storytelling / his oft-used ruses have
Misfired . . .
What to invent?
Which request should he fulfill?
And the angle of attack?
Like an echo /
. . . A trace
A tattoo’s phosphorescence /
Exit the dream
Micaceous specks from a vanished hamlet
***
by sea spray
Low and rocky a warriors’ nest /
No one’s getting off the boat
Padlocked port
Hideouts lay waste to the domain awaiting
movers. . .
Other islands,
good anchorages hang
there
Dulichium,
Samos and Zakynthos /
. . .
How to approach them in the spaces between Dawn’s rose-red fingers?
***
amed
at the
wor
ld’s
ed
ge
Suffering numerous torments through tenacity
. . . also saving my equipment
my bounties
Did we leave for a pittance?
I dialed down my pride
Curiously, the horizon stood still.
. . . All accounts have been settled unbeknownst to you.
Without interest.
***
The gods got involved to resolve their differences
Lives tossed about Shells
There are flowers flowering forgetting In People’s Homes
in winter my heart has been emptied bitterness
of exile
. . . and my mother
(livid) spat in my face . . . poor Ajax
death does not reset the clocks! . . .
My companions threw themselves at dinner unsuspicious of
the forbidden
I held up
to set an example
(or so I thought)
Restive at every metamorphosis Images
in relief
. . . Without the face-to-face to tell the story . . .
What great glory have I won?
***
we no longer play
on the shore
My people await my corpse
[reassuring themselves otherwise?]
I gallivanted a long time a travel neurosis!
the circuit left something to be desired
Hoping to come back to life in the shade of a jujube tree
Sipping afternoon coffee apart from
the sidewalk tables
. . . in the moonlight no ghost slides through
the eye of a needle nor bird hoots an omen
***
Lyre taut
Taking care to adjust sounds to frame
perceptible
Obscure all the same. . . best to avoid obscurity
at night all the casseroles are
shattered
Discontinuity throws off balance. . .
He found what there is to say. Beyond naming.
Or describing.
The audience brings its contradictions.
At every moment the circle is broken.
Remade sometimes
***
accidentally
Reflected perhaps
Anonymous deaths those that celebrate a system
Inclined to martyrs’ euphoria
Oompahs
Or every other event to justify the means. . .
. . .
Composition a two-way mirror
Inside vainly your soul beats its wings
***
can’t repress. Those words coming out
randomly did he weigh them well? Despite the absence
of the books he’d delve into at his pleasure
Did she
understand?
It’s discouraging, he says to himself. So much work!
A cloud . . .
In the slightly fading blue of the image
The bow and the lyre depend only on re-upping tension.
Conversations with Calypso 2
Who will choose Ulysses’ root for me?
Du Bellay, Les Regrets LXXXVII
Calypso was inconsolable at Ulysses’ departure.
Fénelon, Les Aventures de Télémaque
She wandered undignified, seeing her lost happiness
everywhere while errant Ulysses encountered his own
legend in Alcinous . . .
Michel Deguy, Tombeau de Du Bellay
This so-called breathless body /
stranded /
As if he were emptying out his blood /
thus will converse on the pebbled beach /
Hiding from an echo. . . /
The lacerated horizon inspires heartbreak /
Memory deftly weaving its canvas already /
weft raises
a notch
Edge a trace’s transparency/
evoked Renewing pleasure
Poem /
Ancient one folded over his oblique view
Vision of a rending /
moment Take on this story
Return /
Unfinished
Wave bringing you to the threshold /
Illiterate mother’s language
Outrageous
In vain the question pauses on our lips/
Cracks where signs are emptied/
*
From fragment to incision Chaos gives way
Unremarkable battle/
On earth in heaven
A fine slate house rises
Where the beloved with her lover stokes a wood fire /
All danger avoided action suspended /
To what risk
Still submitting his desire /
For, from nightfall, passion takes its own measure
of the risks it incurs /
Verge,
All in all salt-eroded opening /
Not place
Consulting all these worn-out itineraries/
Sliding mutely to you and hobbling your memory /
This imbalance on the lookout among so many shipwrecks/
Empowerment and patience in order to
build / your boat
I’ll help like a woman
Who awaits the messenger at heaven’s gate
Exiling myself from immortals perhaps I will touch
Bottom/
I hear these words put up with only half
Feeling a kind of regret as I step away
*
Punishment invoking disavowed differences /
Intonation differs when time fades to black /
Disjointed parts lying on the sand /
It’s nothing
Other than a bit of eagerness
To read in my thoughts what you find entertaining
Fallow labyrinth
Felt up once upon a time /
It’s not wrong to strategize /
My den is neither Circe’s cave nor a pigsty/
I did not wish
To change you or for you to change/
Come back scorched. . .
It’s not a reason is it/ you said:
There won’t be a shadow of a doubt this
Will surprise some intersection of our wishes/ this
Will fill tomorrow’s palimpsest pages/ this
Will work beyond the siren’s broken spell/ this
will cost us. . .
More than hard marble. . .
And more than the sea air. . .
. . .
And you laughed
(I liked the timbre of that laugh)
Containing swells/
Holding breath/
. . .
Our exhausted bodies
Amnesia and catastrophes
Benign disappointments nail you before the door/
Attending mute
Collapse/
*
Consoling ourselves sticking ear in seashell
Cheating grief/
I neither desired this departure nor
desired to keep you
Certainly
You’ll want to come back
It’s not like that don’t know how it’s /
Time leaves an imprecise imprint
/ The moment hardens in a coincidence
Go away, for you arrive here hated by the gods . . . not me /
Do you remember
I didn’t tie you down with a spell /
Didn’t you dream of ending your wandering at my side /
Enjoying a surfeit
Didn’t you take off your shirt at the top of the island/
Smothered the bonfires not me
The gods know nothing of mourning, the subterranean work of grief/
Wasn’t it you who took over my prayer? not me /
I neither asked for nor planned a siege nor
Did I rejoice at the sacking / . . .
I saved you
Alone on your keel in the wine-dark sea/
I’d really like to let you go not me/
The one who puts my sighs in order
Jealous
Clemency shoreline/ irritates
So much
Here’s bread water red wine
and sturdy clothing / may the wind be at your back
not me
I’ll help you broken goddess
Alas
Obeying/ . . .
*
Emphatic metaphor reduced to silence when /
Disfigures strikes of lighting I carry /
Ah if a single spark is still
Alive in me or
Some smoke and mirrors . . .
For a long time I watched you sleeping on the beach/
keeping vigil out of devotion and fear sudden meta-
morphoses/ I overheard secrets that were better left unspoken
and forgotten / . . . or I’d have been mad at you!
What I want I don’t want end lessly the words/
Rip those etymology falters and
break through/
Cross out
Taking up fruits of the sea . . .
Straightaway you recount your odyssey servants report to me /
Full of excitement . . .
I’m intrigued by the ingenious bait
Suspicion will get me nowhere / I
give Without receiving help
Without reaping a profit /
Attacked can’t die. . . you cold /
Going to curb what do you have to say to me? /
*
He’s on his way. Dreading winds
unleashed and abyssal monsters. He recognized the bonfires
before attaining familiar port. Will he recognize
terra firma and the people of his country?
His dog will bark one last time. They say animals
never forget their master.
Later with his guests he recalls that
time when he wandered
