Читать книгу Mezzaluna - Michele Leggott - Страница 9

swimmers, dancers

Dear Heart

dear heart it was a coast road

long past lilac time and well out of town

the sea out of sight and driving north

in the far south the radio swelled

nostalgia

and I want you to know

that I remember it all the time

it was ‘just’ part of your afternoon repertoire

a dance-floor pick-up

kept on at you all those years the romance the real

life dance we were brought in to share

the sun and the son

you were making it true with a late-fifties step

up the coast into heaven

and some memorable parties

fishing trips

carnivals

a dog a truck a baby sister

a walk to the swing bridge

and back

and more . . .

then it was moving into town settling

down and later the piano

you were picking out Mancini arrangements

Nat King Cole My Fair Lady and the theme

from Mondo Cane

you sang them into the woodwork

and when it really was

a table for one and a single rose

that hard lost time

I heard Errol Garner play I only

have eyes for you in a winter house dancing

with knots in my throat past midnight

and your brave tra-la-la

half a world away

it’s a lonely thing to do

and you couldn’t get used to the cold

or the hole in the bed

the silence after you sang out

the songs that would never mean dancing again

oh my sentimental mother

you died

and I saw you in each other’s arms again

an hour from dawn

just as it should have been

my dear

I took your rings and came back to the real

life dance of these years

a song by songs and it seems I don’t know all the words

because you never did

but

here we are driving the coasts of our dreams and

bending again in time

over the precious cradle of the heart

Colloquy

virgins plus curtains minus dots claret and celestial blue

people still go to cottages in moody seaside weather

to read for a week how will we do it now?

when I go for walks words stalk along too

I’ll be travelling mid-February and can’t guarantee a lucid mind

what about a big table in a room with windows

looking over the wild and wavy event?

or good merganser fans unfolding folding thought out there

one of these days we’ll tend to them

those fair fictitious people the women

Oldest and Most Loyal American Friend

1

more to our liking—

the idea of a winged victory

headless to be sure

but lucidly and in good humor

she’ll answer our questions:

when did the line begin

to curve underwater like that?

why are the roses (which aren’t

even here) suddenly twisting

into circles? why are we drawn

to these figures? Samothrace

you’ve vanished

in your place, le juste milieu,

Gertrude stalks

the little lobsters of Perpignan

replaces the bright water with

a clear chablis she’ll drink

them with tonight

make a feast of tumult eat

its flesh crack the golden shell

and suck confusion’s juice

wet ankles tucked-up skirt

prismatic drops in the bucket

on the stolen stele

knock it off

fish it out

2

Common cheap and tender

the pleasure of a purely predatory

recipe, say crawfish étouffée

we were seduced at once by

the little town (no poetry) and thought

what a happy life it would be

only to cultivate white

raspberries (sea also) iced

champagne by the approved method

then go to the Lyric Restaurant

drink solstitial dazzle on the terrace

and order the house specialty

you’ll wait an hour but it will fly

hot dry white wine, bouquet and bouillon

the rifts and the tears are your own

in the interstices of the lobster meat

a rich dark roux from which the bouquet

may be removed They did not in Perpignan

Reading Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers

lavenders blue

roll your eleven weeks onto summer’s late belly and look out

at the world with your black olive eyes

this was promised under the apple tree at Christmas

when you swam in deep pools of picture space nine days out

among the dream polaroids jacaranda diamante

simulacra of before and after

the visceral rub of pōhutukawa in bloom

good established labour the sun going down the Carmel geese

shrieking and flocking the big movie of us coming apart then

waterboatmen on the lake at dawn

and we began the long haul from Recovery nine floors up

to Tranquility a sea a somer-séson

all the pretty little horses pretty things pretty soon

the goodnight fine art getting

the lullaby to work the baby to sleep merrigolds he smiles tell me

another one and the story remembers itself by rhyme settles easily

into songs he likes the made-up rock

and roll the stroller doing its stationary miles in the next room

the two of them the two of us too whacked to

(what??) read proof

quote dear one sweet heart lover unquote air of heaven

half hyphen moon bee time energy colon coffee colon

the feeds the changes the drinks of water the spiders on the cistern

nightlife Horace and Chick Corea at it again

in the lamplight heliotrope splash! mother of thyme stomma cock

mares nest and moonshine wakerobin oh yes

and again and again the all-night frogs go la-di-da-di-dah

to the tune of John Brown’s body

the household gets up at midnight and stirs about

paradise garden I would write you down he said

in a style of leaves growing

eyes curving

toward that question just where do the roses swing

are they pink and blown and warm as sleep

at the gate where lavender works the bees all year round

or red and sweet as tea grown cool because everyone went to check

some story about wind roses you already knew were lining the nest

with scent and bloom and two quarter-view profiles

flickering out of the frame

Boosey & Hawkes

Black & Decker where do we get to

slow nights when the book clears off to Baltimore unimaginable

in the time of tearwater tea and willpower cookies

Hobans Ahlbergs Lobel Wise Brown I Can Read

two wind-ups with outstretched arms and joined hands

dancing around and around the parameters

goor jaggery plums and palm sugar

dates with stratagems the minute hand sweeps away

some things have to be written in later some things

look like porcelain fingers on the coverlet unforgettable

inhabitation the moment hand-painted plaster of pearls

some things to be said for low orbit

cosmos nods

Hippolyte and Cornelia rumble over the picket

which line is his? which hers? moonbeam you smile around

then again it is not night when I see your face thefts modifying

or migrating winging along close to a shelving coast

where the expedition has wandered out of its hinterlands at last

whooping like kids walking on sand dollars at dead low tide

a stone’s throw from the lacewing villas way on out to the channel

sea biscuits cake urchins (placenta to you) walking on the sea bed

the rider in the backpack wants to bite them all

mouthfuls of breast and he doesn’t care if it’s salty

he cries out and when he gets what he wants we’ll be there

Mare Tranquilitum see horse the flowers

Merylyn or Tile Slide or Melete

Tigers