Carolyn Forche - Blue Hour

appears to feel the soul go forth

— Lucretius, De rerum natura (translated by W. H. Mallock)

a knowledge that burns thought

— Maurice Blanchot

I am alone, so there are four of us

— Gaston Bachelard

La terre nous aimait un peu je me souviens

— René Char

behind the face that speaks to us and to whom we speak

— Emmanuel Levinas

black with burnt-up meaning

— Julia Kristeva

Ça ne veut pas rien dire: this does not mean nothing

Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire: this journey I wanted to make again

dans le vrai: in the midst of things

enough seen. enough had. enough

— Arthur Rimbaud

idam agnaye, na mama: this is for the fire, not for us.

— Vedic mantra

Il n’y a pas d’absence irremplaçable: there is no absence that cannot be replaced

— René Char

J’ai rêvé tellement fort de toi / J’ai tellement marché tellement parlé: I have dreamed so strongly of you / I have walked so much, talked so much

— attributed to Robert Desnos

not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest

— Walter Benjamin

oder nicht: or not

on lave les corps, on les prépare pour l’ensevelissement: one washes the bodies, one prepares them for burial

pleroma: fullness, plenitude; in Gnostic theology, the spiritual universe as the abode of God and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations

musée hypothétique: hypothetical museum

— after the painter Ashley Ashford-Brown, of Ivry-sur-Seine

the very language of lack

— Edmond Jabès

une enfant qui meurt: a child who dies

zero: also the “pure zero” of C. S. Peirce’s semiotic metaphysics

With gratitude to my editor, Terry Karten; my literary agent, Virginia Barber; the poets Frank Bidart, Robert Creeley, Barbara Cully, Forrest Gander, Louise Glück, Lise Goett, Ellen Hinsey, Fanny Howe, Ilya Kaminsky, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Honor Moore, Michael Palmer, Robert Pinsky, Lloyd Schwartz, C. D. Wright; and, as ever, my friend Svetozar Daniel Simko and my dear husband, Harry Mattison, for readings of this work during its making.

I am deeply grateful to J. Patrick Lannan and Lannan Foundation for the support that made this book possible, and also to Robert and Peggy Boyers, editors of Salmagundi, where “Blue Hour” and “Nocturne” were originally published, and Michael Ondaatje and Linda Spalding, publishers of Brick, where “Afterdeath” and “Refuge” first appeared.