(Robert Louis Stevenson, “Where Go the Boats?”)
Gray green is the river
At the end of the world
So I misremember
What once I heard
In the Garden of Verses
The lamps have been lit
The blessings and the curses
And all I cannot write
All I cannot write
Remains in the song
The lamps I cannot light
And the rhymes passed along
Other little children
In another dream
Fall into the river
That turns gray green
(Robert Creeley, “The Door”)
What can I say
of that which is already
broken and scattered,
rhymed but tattered?
All doors are
magical, all gardens
Victorian, all lovers
are a renewal.
She leaves town
but she returns—
dismemberment, displacement,
are these concerns
or merely forms of permission
that we seek
over and over,
taking a peek
as through a hole
in the wall and not a door
at all?
Voyeur then
without permission,
because the forbidden
is the magical,
and only the transgressive
is lawful.
So the companions
teach us—but only
if they can reach us.
(Michael Palmer, Letters to Zanzotto, “Letter 7”)
Dear M,
The air here
is much like the air there
And the airs here
are much like the airs there
I know this
because I have stopped breathing
I know this
because I am breathless
I know this
because I have watched the film
Or invented the film
about the lovers hovering
Over the city
and the way desire spells disaster
Above what is fated
to become ruins
Or rooms
or an arbitrary set of lines
Sight lines or song lines
lines spoken over the din
In a crowded hall
or an empty street
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