Читать книгу The Milk Hours - John James - Страница 10

April, Andromeda

I am in this world, not self, not seed, not stamen-dusted

pistil flicking in the wind—the eye sees past its limitations.

Crushed petals in the dirt, I’m courting a horse with an apple,

watching its white tail swish along the fence. Somewhere,

the galaxy spins. I smile at the cloudless sky.

—

Continuum of frequencies, Ptolemy’s

Almagest, the star charts called it Little Cloud—

chained constellations in The Book

of Fixed Stars. Nova for new, cut fish

for never. A heart held back for the knife.

—

The opening of large

tracts by the icecutters

cutters commonly causes

a pond to break

up earlier; for the water

agitated by the wind

even in cold weather

wears away

the surrounding ice.

—

This morning I walked past

rows of jeweled honeysuckle

twining through the square

links in an aluminum fence.

They glistened in the sun,

as they always do. You

could say their vines shuddered.

—

Photographed by Isaac

Roberts, 1887, again

in 1899, the galaxy, the ruler

of man, the pearling

spiral takes its name from

the area of sky in which it appears.

Sussex, England, retrograde motion.

The daughter chained to a rock.

—

We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The universal

sense of fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget

name and date and geography. “How in the right are children

to forget name and date and place.”

—

Pained loveliness—the sonnet

sweet fetter’d. Morning, still, couched

in narrative—carrots taken

from my palm. Horse’s muzzle,

its silken touch, teeth against the skin.

The eye sees the mind sees

crushed petals in the pestle.

All parts are binding.

—

Constellations—huge

man wearing a crown,

upside down with respect

to the eclipse. The smaller

figure next to him sitting

on a chair. A whale

somewhere beneath it.

—

By ear industrious—attention

met—misers of sound

and syllable. See kale, see

rows of collard stalks—think

Cassiopeia. Think arrogant

and vain. Greek models, sea

monster Cetus, the errant study of.

—

I shall ere long paint to you—as one can without

canvas—the true form of the whale—

my parts are all binding—

as he actually appears to the eye—

I wonder, now, how Ovid did it—I pass that matter by.