11.26.2003

from a section of Grassblade Light, called "Letters to Elena":

         23

i.m. Armand Schwerner


Padre Soler is on the radio...
heart be ashamed of heart, blent
with life's foundations
. The listing, bent-
over, heeling, keening keel's – gone solo.


Pianissimo now, catamaran. Akhmatova
besieged in Petersburg – heart is irate,
Assyrian, on fire – a Q? Decipher it.
Leave it for burnt notebooks – clamor


of the throng. The slow leavings erase
themselves – float off with what you see
each day, as a tree in a square of squares
is branching. Fire-tong or supergrass –


farmed-out – superfluous and quadrilateral.
These half-notes, half-seen...
autumn's fall, cuneiform incision:
each heavy blade a W, left in the wall.


Axehead for all. But you...you will remember
the way it crystallized at last, fleet
flower: only a promise, the way sweet
slow wings emerge beneath your tenderness


the blackened score a dove cupped there
between prow and stern, amidships,
in the ribs. Undecipherable, your lips
lifting my fingers. Hush – beware.


Dust rises like your fingers to my lips,
like dew before the sun. Like the tracks
of man or wolf, in the blue snow,
by the deer licks. No one sees us go.



2.4.99


Ron Silliman has a nice post about Armand Schwerner today.

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