SOME HELIOTROPES
conspicuous,
in that it belonged there & must have arrived
at the
end of some itinerary—une pièce de résistance—in a park
beside a
fountain, the laughter of remote spires
assembling
to no good purpose (what they divulge is neither
an explanation nor an inventory)—in a
shaft
of blue
light their mouths corolla upwards, even
the sun
cannot go on breaking over new ground
(indefinitely?)—a
tract, spelled out in paragraphs & capitals
the
“solemnities” of each late harvest stripped
of the identity imposed upon it (the breast
his
mother refused him, carved from old fists) or deep down
in the live culture, strange penicillins
give form to a brief
&
tender incest—a single irrational symbol whose
features belie
the
uniform field—because of it—the same regimen of
nothing
to say, everything said: a brown
paper
bag in which he sought a way back, long ago (destination
not
indicated but sensed from things passed or seen
en route)—the same impressions laid one
upon another
simultaneously
the beginnings of long
chains
of thought & their ends—dividing each time
by
a subtle integer we never remembered the key to, reluctantly
stretching out a hand on the scarred river
ice (to stave off
another separation?)—the rest
is
statistical, metaphor like target silhouettes, strung out in a sub-
urb or
desert (the high atlas, for example, or a housing
project
in x)—the outskirts redolent & la
pensée sauvage as pre-
fabrication,
modular, resolving the inner primitive
in
studied conjugations (i clench my teeth, it doesn’t work
no
matter how hard), prompted by thoughts
mostly
of other places but sometimes not—or casting back to the
undamaged
wall & well-trodden path that lead up to it:
when the last stone fell, you had
a hand in that also
THE GEOMETRY LESSON
it
is in the same way theoretically understandable that mental illness may,
in
its own turn, be linked with some bodily accident
these
elucidations: “the world is still the vague
theatre
of all experience”—… scripting dis-
location,
an interminable middle, without
beginning
or end—playing & replaying a scenario of “strange interludes,” im-
pedimenta
(in which everything must be
exposed
to view)—this moment is crucial: the door is ajar, the cell
no
longer closes off—already the walls
are only
bars (or the distance from one
of two
intersecting lines to the other increases
beyond
all bounds as we recede
from
their common point)—approximations demand
a
plenum: “more room desire to winter”—a radius, to thicken it
into a
body—derived, by trial & error, its hard
edges, a
view into another interior (yet distant—as if
blurred
or in weather), invisible as letters printed far apart on a con-
tour
map, haunting its periphery—“continuation is re-
assuring”
she says—a present
&
nameless concern who “unlacks” (the letter x, for instance,
which is
a variable, in a place somewhere else, on the last
or next
page, collapsed under the effort) …
the old
fears: however many messages we send (we’ll never get through)—
channels,
ridges, walls, tendons, bridges: something
splayed,
available for use—or a mouth
gapes at
one side of the stage, belabouring it—each figure
divided
ruinously in the outlying & remote space which is
sometimes
called the nave—a
movement
to foreclosure, idealised
as an object or an objectile slipped through the vowel, onerously—“as i look up
or it falls apart”
INCARNEDINE
“it is
therefore the imagination that makes the reflection of the emotions
possible”—or
someone calls in the middle of the night
& asks about the war & public
opinion, although
sooner
or later everything becomes habit—the short-wave hissing
in
several languages at once
“autochthonous
selves”—a clockface slumping in the heat
impossible
to tell what time of year it is—looking down
at the
page with printed words & partially
impaired vision (the shadow of an
aeroplane
flying low over
water),
something which could be an emblem, not of endurance
but of
congruence in flux—events currently taking place in x: he tries
to think
his eyes wide open, to say
in this
sense reflection & extension are one &
the
same, as slow-moving silhouettes
in
a calibrated range of ...
distance
by time: to see the approach
in exact
detail—citing
turbulence,
agitation, intruding upon the calculated
“loss of
faith” & other derogations—it had to be spoken of
though
in words re-learnt & re-
forgotten—by
presentiment, conscience separating the idea [of power?]
from its
actual exercise in the world—which means: to go on
for as long as you can endure it
immunology,
among other preventatives (“the principals of nature
being
the detour of human observation”)—a too-general
anæsthesia,
lessening the flow, slowed down, almost to a stop “for all
intents
& purposes”—or jamb
the body
deep into a hole (to repel ghosts) & speak of it only
in the past tense
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE
an ambiguous response: caution no longer
the
stone that will provoke him in his task
it was
arranged, somewhere
[else],
in winter (leaving
the page cold
a shape
like the sky suggesting “absent scenes
&
feelings / of severe
randomness”—the gap
between
x & y is widening, but
how to precede? i move to a place not
far from
here—the ever
invisible meanwhile: grasping one horn
of the
dilemma (the film is of a
form of
hygiene
by
other than visual means
bitter
taste in the mouth, in silence, speaking
otherwise—not
to /
sleep & forget
a phrase
like “unleavened
bread,”
which is also a signpost: the road to
emmaus—that
leads us
on (zieht uns
hinan),
as goethe says—the demon
of
friday
recurring, incidental &
con-
tingent:
“progress” is the only
clue to this tædium vitæ
each
piece
falling
/ into place—given back, abandoned, over-
taken—although
no
single answer presented itself
to plug
the holes
dwelt
in, or surmised—the idea of a cyrrhosis (“i
eat
my own
children”)—the po-faced bride
from
strange envelopes arrived by flight, so long kept at bay
the
shadows, planted
in the
instruction
manual—employed, even, to more practical
ends
PSYCHOLOGY WITH NUDE & MONDRIAN
a
beginning always remembered differently—i step forward
& i
vanish, the white surface
devoid of all sentiment
there
remains the progress from one point to another
like
hyphenation—some problem of density, cast-offs
“why try
to give the impression of a consistent &
indivisible
personality?”—
everything is too artificial &
very
real, not the sum of its parts, & nothing keeps still
the
nervous reflex from synapse to eye
compelling
a recognition (“things the mind
already
knows”), the mask of an exhibited crime
or
plus-&-minus abstractions of the sea at scheveningen—
a grey
undifferentiated sky & roof-
line with broken
chimneys
like “stumps of teeth”
black gums
the air
tastes of salt, human flesh, aftertaste, lips & tongue
(it
stretches out into the water, a dark line
anchoring
it, keeping the drowned body in place)
the
sound of running water persists through several nights,
footfalls
in the border passage:
a
departure, an embarkation, an expedition—
the
moorings are broken
&
the tide pulls unrelentingly the body near as from afar
a rumour
from
some prenatal & anonymous night
that won’t disappear, but spreads out “like a stain”
MONUMENT TO V. TATLIN
to calculate the amount of oxygen in a given
space—how
it could be situated, attached, positioned,
dis-
played—the lifecycle of such a personal
appliance, something
awkward, like a carelessly discarded shoe
waiting
to be tripped over—the inauspicious movement
through air,
flung side-ways, hinged between collapse
&
flight—a succession of animated right-angles
imitating a procedure: how could it be born
of anything but
precedent? some private recourse to first
principles—a downfall
of the last phrase, as “inner necessity”:
something resembling
a noun & modifier, pitched in rapid
succession (but what is measure when no one
part is discrete
from another?) the ever more removable
“&”
not what
it spoke but de-noted, thrusting into
it—sans
gages / of the nearest next ground “c’est à
vous de le trouver”
(to dispel the illusion of itself, on such
& such a day, when x
comes to take the place of y—not without warning—or a
parenthesis is opened & through it
passes “the
disposable body”—a cause for / belief?
&c—to write it
down & then commemorate: here, if for no
other reason than
to relish its non sequitur—or it went un-
noticed (as they tried to tell the skein
from the face): i’ll
come back, there’s someone at the door—but
who were you?
a window is lighting up in the sleep of the
trained
mind—in the “prone” position, & however
slight their
evidence—a gallery of ordinary things:
street numbers, names
(in & out of sight, at any time e.g.
october, of that
particular year)—the hollow, cut into frost,
is a question
of which birth full to its shores does not
answer—counting back-
wards from the articles that belong to it,
this seemingly
regulated mechanism, shoved up into the womb
of some dark horse—the reassembled marquetry
in the museum
foyer, the object relation of
false-coincidences in which
something comes to an end, expires—basso
profundo? or
sunk in the revolving earth & carried
off
from that easy plunder site (archæology), or
the
nonlight at the edge of the sea, stripped
down
in place of its urgency—as before
reversions—& insular, as the
one, towering flesh: but without nature’s
aid
even such a “coup” as this could not have
been accomplished