Pierre Joris
Five Elegies and a Meditation
postmodern elegy
how long before
you cross out
the numbers
of the dead?
they are still & all
in there,
here, mixed
in, unshuffled deck, un-
weeded stack, in-
serted with the live
the quick the soon
to be dead the soon
to move. their names
& numbers
stuck between
friends & foes
by the aleatory
contingency
of alphabetic rigor
— yet rechecking
not once do the dead
jostle the dead.
that time too
will come but
not today
not today.
1.
telegrammatica per franco beltrametti
"Caro, son qui: ti scrivo
(I write to tell you
per dirti..."
(two or three things
not bad at all
(all words are borrowed only)
vetri / polvere / rossa
no, I have no Greek theatre in my backyard
"continuazione in (p)rosa"
"a dead poet and one alive"
"una specie"
"can laugh at it all"
(la poesia)
(un matin de neige)
"di filosofia d'azione"
AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD
It's our turn. I think so
"wiederholen
abwandeln
meditieren"
and the world is becoming
far less elegant
"un trapasso
dal sangue al sasso"
desolation/ we will be here no longer/ not
j'emporte avec moi
a book to be called
Blows Against The Mother Tongue
a cura de
(toi & moi)
(cosi cosi)
vos images
merci, mon ami,
abrazos,
Pierre
2.
WITH ARMAND IN MIND
the cold from the north straight in my face
the lights the lights!
do me in light, in mazola oil
do me in heaven
do me & do me
the cold needs to get warmed up
do me warmed up get
the lights do me do me the lights
do me in light
do me in heaven
do not wait to do me
in the cold of Aasgard
3.
A CALM VADEMECUM DOSE
toward a poem for Douglas Oliver
finally, though it starts
last Calvados tear
cried embracing you
knowing, knowing
this was the
long good-bye
tiers of Calvary
no more dawn on Pont Neuf
the new bridge now the oldest
over a river that is a scene insane
as I run
as I hold
the last
glass
of Calva, poured out
now on Paris ground,
sop for some imaginary big dog
& yet, Lady Lethe didn’t get it all
as “dark switches on the light” title
of the last poem, Feb 10, 2000
“snow lying like a private drift of death”
“my interest is in the form that death gives to our lives”
“a public heart” he was, in John Donne’s phrase quoted by Denise Riley
and the master of a most demanding poetics: “How shall I write this?
By living it; that rule has not changed. You have children. Lose yourself in them.”
even now, when
“death, our richest humour, fills with lights.”
a stress born in time
stands outside
a minor, eternal present, a
trembling instant
partly resisting the flow
the line creates it
its very great fascination.
arrived at this . at that
bouche d’ombre
the descent beckons
into memory’s hollows &
gulphs — metropolitan or -tain
through it rebirth of sorts, e-
merge elsewhere, come up
for breath, even if
myth your identity not safe
above or under-ground
the grind, the grind
I groan in dejection
poor Calvados
pour calm vademecum dose
pour Calvary
go with me
calamitous vagrant ryme
we sat & smoked Cuba
sighed Africa
sited America
vaude-willed Haiti
wept the Maghreb
set the world neither aright nor afire nor akimbo
recrossed Pont Neuf
had coffee & croissants at Le Petit Bar
embraced at metro gate
shot up the veins of another new morning
will meet again just there
I mean here
4.
FOR BARRY MACSWEENEY DEAD THIS WEEK AT 51
First
Jim Morrison
rock idol,
now you.
Help him
break through
to this, that
or any side
(you are
the better
poet if not
the better
man) I
played you
once what I
wish you now:
happy trails —
you too a
quicksilver
messenger:
ride on &
you’ll find
your chicano fretboard,
you’ll open the sand
you’ll deck the asteroid.
Drift on
through the tripe,
the liquid overdrive
you could not escape
is sour grapes now.
Here there’s snow
or a slow
decline
in the bathtub
where a fine
finesse
is as crinkly
as your heart’s
crisp.
I still don’t know
what a gamboge
stair is.
The yellow brick road
all the way
to heaven?
Death taught
us nothing.
Barry, meet Jim.
The quicksilver
cut we liked
so much was
Who do you love?
a live suite or
hand we still follow
or hold.
Whose hand?
Or the shed noose
of our dreams.
Shared. Go on,
there’ll be trailers
for sale. Don’t
settle there
or for anything
less.
5.
Paz
6:30 am on terrace of the French Hotel in
Berkeley, reading the New York Times
obituary for Octavio Paz while
across the street just
to the right of Chez Panisse
a pale watery sun
sits locked in-
to the criss-cross webbing
of a tall dark fir —
as if his going had
for a moment stopped
Sol in it’s tracks —
the world a bit colder
after the heat of Paz,
a bit older, less bold,
his ashes raining
now over
Mexican earth.
A light wind shifts
twigs, the sun it
seems to
move in-
crementally higher —
it all does go on
while you now sit with Benito
Juarez & Pancho Villa
& introduce them
to some yankee poetas
Blackburn, say, and Olson still
mumbling “the wheels of the sun
must be unstuck”
& you argue for a
revolution
of the imagination &
we say, Octavio,
gracias for
releasing that sun!