Читать книгу In Defense of Nothing - Peter Gizzi - Страница 19

DEUS EX MACHINA

I guess if we get to be here today

and watch this movie together

it has all been worth these past thirty-odd years

it took to get here

on this Tuesday. In this city.

Is why I’m here. To know you.

I will compare knowing and saying

and tell of all such coordinates

that run together to the river replete with its ghosts

in this instance of talk.

But we won’t scuttle. Will we?

As it gave the first buoy of its name.

Friendship, so entire, so perfect

you will hardly find the like elsewhere.

Even if the buildings are all in disrepair,

please, don’t let that inform us.

It’s meant for us, to pass by that dogwood tree

in May as our voices carry into Thursday twilight.

May I keep this promise?

Along with those petals flaunting the new season.

Little pennants of time. Boundary stones

to be collected on the periphery, where I live,

and where I remain, so I’ll be here thinking of you.

Don’t worry. I’ll work hard. Places everyone.

When sunlight accumulates in afternoon.

A box of elderberry lists behind the alcove …

then description fails the reader and we

are left with only shapes and patterns. Still

a single leaf trembles on the breeze.

Emblematic, a lovely badge, serrated

and at peace with the day that has flowered

beyond the notion of our need.

Where the reader lists. The poet builds a room,

it can be small or grand depending on the tone

as in June her garden is real.

An intricate lace of affection to correspond

when wanting fails. Perhaps a yellowed doily

on your grandmother’s nightstand

like a tune, long off, played

on a toy piano. Clink. These lapses

from time to time fill hours and cars

on the highway. A room to include your ramble,

as well as itinerant interlopers visiting

from unforeseen lake districts—with its news

of festival lights and famous contests—

where the song dies down into rotting hulks,

trunks exposed at the sleeve of the shore.

These transitions or seams if you like

inform me. Water and land disguised as matter.

A carcass dressed and open for inspection

revealing nothing but process, lovely and

inescapable from our own play.

I was waiting behind the skene, worn,

ravaged from too many trips to the provinces,

too many performances, too many nights

accosted by the rabble. Some people got a lot a gun.

What makes you different? Show me.

Here’s a dime. Call your dead

and find out what they’ve learned;

having been too preoccupied with the house

and its metaphors and where

the objects would lead them. Too selfish

to watch out for us. Abandoned,

beautiful and wide-eyed, developing the tools

to maintain the glorious liberties we carry

in our hearts and pockets. Then something

else did come to stand in its place: namely you.

Which is where I’m going tonight,

despite the distance from seam to shadow.

For I am relative to your I, while

this page walks into my side, where

the sun sets. It’s a special light this.

When evening takes a sip off the din

of long endurance, becalm, be near me

always—book. So I and I and I we go.

Together under the elms. Won’t that be nice?

To watch one by one all the colors

drain out of the sky into our organs.