Carolyn Forche - Blue Hour

a scriptorium

a search without hope for hope

a searchlight washing the fields

a secret that stands apart from every secret

a single turn, then years on the same road

a snow of ash risen from winter months

a spiral of being

a spirit gold-breathed, something not made only of

a stairwell spiraling

a stalled ambulance

a steep wooden staircase

a sudden reticence that seizes the heart

a syllable a dove

a taxi and three gunmen

a taxi its four doors open its lights out

a telephone ringing in an empty house

a ticking telex

a traffic jam of refugees on a desert road

a train rounding low sand hills

a veiled window a camera hidden in a loaf of bread

a veiled window where appears a revenant

a walnut box of world and light

a war-eyed woman

a web of survivals

a wind of burnt documents borne by wind

a white rain, then your face becoming another’s

a white road

a white road billowing behind the relief trucks

a white road ending in one’s own life

a whitened eye clouded with gnats

a willow vase, more bedsheets flaring over the furniture

a wind lifting washed linen

a wind-flock of butterflies

a window of grilled hens

a wire fence woven with pine boughs

a woman in a blowing coat on the tarmac

a woman rubbing the mirror until she is gone

a woman sitting on a window ledge as if about to vanish

a word dissolved into the yet-again

a world set in language and deserted

a world thought into being

a wreath on water

a year passing through itself

a yellow mosaic of remains

above a pacific slumber of white houses

above a salon de thé

absent in a garden of watered roses

acres of blue wind

after having gone all the way to the end

after his internment and before his suicide

again and again

against a sea of recriminations

against a winter pine, eating a sparrow

against this, that

air filled with ash, notebooks with sorrowing ink

airfield to airfield

algebraic music

all night the boats calling out

all of them, à-dieu

all questioning to myself

allées of tall trees

alluvial plains

alpha rays of plutonium

although we are a small group on a private tour

America a warship on the horizon at morning

American university T-shirts among the executed

among white birch stands

an ache of such light

an ache of such light fixed in the bone

an anonymous work performed

an authorized death a non-authorized death

an inn for phantoms

an inner tact

an object that disappears from the word

an olive field of ordnance

an ossuary

an oven of birds

ancient light having reached us

and all questions, and all questions about questions

and among the stars, those too distant to be seen

and collective memory a dread of things to come

and for women who desire men

and have left undone

and in the dream Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire

and in the villages laundry hanging for months

and in their eyes the years taken from them

and it is certain someone will be at that very moment pouring milk

and it is supposed that we are describing the world

and its corresponding moment in the past

and night, a knock at the window

and night, a storehouse

and on the battlefield, our anatomy lessons

and phrases like: vanishing pianos

and she body and promising light she exists

and silence the most mysterious form of affection

and standing in phosphorus rain, the man I have not yet married

and that another will be uttering its first human word

and the glass-winged bats hang in the darkness

and the gun though loud has not discharged

and the house? there. which became what it was because of us

and the marigold the flower of worry

and the shell etching a horizon into our window as it passed

and the trains, the way they come, they tell me it is not the truth but I remember it

and time, speeding as it departs

and we fell into each other laughing the laugh of the newly dead

and we, separated on earth by decades

and what intervened more, war or the passage of time?

and what of those who have made this same journey?

and whispering what could

and writing, the guardian of the past

angelica, anne’s lace, antiphon, aria, ash, asylum

another child filling its mouth with pillow

ants in a city of peony

apparition in a vacant house

appears to feel the soul go forth

apple blossoms and wet wind

approaching the other with empty hands

aria in time of war

armfuls of furze, lupine, cornflower

as a flame is linked to its burning coal

as a mirror changes a face

as a rain, however brief, changes the world

as all afternoon the clouds float west to east, leaf-smoke and lake wind, pumice and plumbago gray, white-storeyed, rain-logged

as any backward look is fictive

as any conflagration or struggle is understood

as any new act inflicts its repetition

as crows mark the fog

as for children, so for the dead

as gloves into a grave

as God withdrawing so as to open an absence

as he appears and reappears in the unknown

as if a flock of geese were following

as if there were no other source of food

as if to say goodbye to his own mind

as if we had only one more hour

as if with the future we could replace the past

as in the childhood of terror and holiness

as light or the retreat of light

as memory, a futile attempt

as more beautiful than it had been because it is lost

as rain before it reaches us

as rain strikes the pails in our tents of wakefulness

as the fence has recorded the wind

as the water in which the corpse has been washed

as those who have returned have said

as though when past and present converge, there is a gap

as thought affects the universe in as yet immeasurable ways

as unexpected rain craters the fields

as when cicadas sing at the cenotaph

ascending to the stone-cool stars

ash manuscript, death aria, hunger fugue

ash sailing ashen wind

at once in this world and the world to come

at the city’s edge the aged cooling towers

at the edge of a forest once for making violins

at the end of their journey, the petals they carry vanish

at the end, where they carry his body

at the point where language stops

at the ticket window, and again in the fruit stalls, a kilo of open melon, in the train without stopping, rain of yellow tickets, broken turnstile

at writing’s border, as if memory were of everyone, forgetting no one, such a cold happiness!

awakening dans le vrai

back to the blowing-out of birthday candles

back to the crystal ring of a toast

back to the furl of his shirt in a hot wind

back to the razing of every edifice

balefire, balcony, balm, belief, benediction

bamboos bleached by light

bananas hacked clean on the stalk, tangerines pulled down with their leaves

bare trees in fog, umbrellas opening all at once

barefoot by choice in the thin sea, by choice wearing black cotton

bats hanging from the rafters, long polished corridors open

bats singing along walls

because we cannot emerge

beds in the great open-air sickbay

before and behind us

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

beings who have chosen one another