Читать книгу Imaginary Vessels - Paisley Rekdal - Страница 13

WHEN IT IS OVER, IT WILL BE OVER

pen and ink reproduction by Troy Passey of a line by

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hurricane of what must be

only feeling, the painting’s

sentence circling to black

on blank, ever-

tightening spiral

of words collapsing

to their true gesture: meaning

what we read

when not reading,

as the canvas buckles

in the damp: freckled

like the someone

I once left sleeping

in a hotel room to swim

the coast’s cold shoals, fine veils

of sand kicked up by waves where

I found myself enclosed

in light: sudden: bright

tunnel of minnows

like scatterings of

diamond, seed pearl whorled

in the same

thoughtless thought

around me: one column of scale

turning at a moment’s decision,

a gesture I

was inside or out

of, not touching but

moving in

accord with them: they

would not wait for me, thickening

then breaking apart as I slid

inside, reading me

for threat or flight by the lift

of my arm, as all

they needed to know

of me was in the movement:

as all this sentence

breaks down to O’s and I’s,

the remnants of someone’s

desires or mine so that

no matter whether I return

to that cold coast, they will

never be there: the minnows

in their bright spiraling

first through sight, then

through memory,

the barest

shudderings of sense:

O and I

parting the mouth with a cry

that contains—

but doesn’t need—

any meaning.