Carolyn Forche - Blue Hour

history decaying

history decaying into images

horse clearing an obstacle

horses, poppies, trees with trunks like sycamores and leaves like maples

hot, the hurry of stars

hour of no matins

house of being

how abandoned how left behind

how better to account for my life

how did this happen? how it always happens.

how it reads its past

how secretly you died for years, on behalf of all who wished for themselves a private death

how the soul becomes an inhabitant of flesh

I am alone, so there are four of us

I am here, blowing into my hands, you are in the other coffin

I can’t possibly get away, she said

I lit a taper in the Cathédrale St-Just, a two-franc candle, birds flying in the dome

I remember standing next to his bed

I see myself in their brass coat-buttons but not in their eyes

I stand on the commode for a glimpse of it

I tried once. it was just before the war, and she had no time for me. I can’t possibly get away

I was to bring him music for the left hand

idam agnaye, na mama

idam agnaye, na mama (this is for the fire, not for me)

if he exists to another, that is need

if rope were writing he would have hanged himself

if you ask him what happened he will tell you

if you bring forth what is within you

in a bowl polished by the morning light

in a village where the women know how to piss standing up

in carceral silence

in glimpses, broken messages, cryptic signs

in his address book, a pressed poppy chosen from his mother’s poppy bed

in his coat, a small cage of canaries

in his hand a clod of himself to wipe on the walls

in memory: the music of an open spigot

in reverse until you were floating in a flat green boat

in solitary reverie we can tell ourselves everything

in stone is written in stone

in the bardo of becoming

in the black daybreak, passing through

in the casket window, a face

in the cellar, three crates: rifles, gold & cognac

in the cesium fields

in the chaotic light in the coal-smoked heavens

in the cities of what can be said

in the country of advanced years

in the ecstasy of standing outside oneself

in the fact of parting

in the garden: heliotrope, phlox, rose trees, trellised roses, blue torenia, hibiscus, blue lobelia, lichen, a bamboo grove

in the garden in winter with my son

in the mathematical language of a time to come

in the morning, a white shirt on the line waving

in the night photograph: electric cities, burning forests

in the pole-and-rag tents

in the still-bandaged pines

in the summer, weeds took over the city: horse weeds known as railway weeds grew taller than people

in the surround of that word

in the time after

in the tin lamp’s punched light

in the toy store, a parcel of toys explodes

in the white infinity of mist

in the window a veil of winter

in their radiance a tub of dry milk

in this camp, how many refugees

in this the child’s blue hour

in thought, where they were lost

incapable of imagining annihilation

inhabiting a body to be abolished

inter alia, inter nos

intercessor

into a duration deep within her

into the world, further illuminated by thought

iris, illuminant

is there anything else?

it appears to be an elegy, put into the mouth of a corpse

it became what it was because of us — in that sense loved

it is as if space were touching itself through us

it is more ominous than any oblivion, to see the world as it is

it is not possible to find you in death’s heaven

it is not raining in the catacombs

it is not you who will speak

it is the during of the world

it is the morning of the body’s empty soul

it is worse than memory

it ruins time, the chiasmus of hope

it was all over

it was all there, written in stone, a record of munitions

it was cinema

it was gruel refused: blue wedges of bread, maggot soup, rice drippings

it was just before the second war, and she had no time for me

it was raining in the catacombs

it was the first time in my life I tasted fish

it was the name of a time, and over there, a place

it was the simplest way to know one another

J’ai rêvé tellement fort de toi

J’ai tellement marché tellement parlé

journey of two thousand kilometers

journey that will have no end

keeping a record of oneself

keepsake, knell, Kyrie

knowing oneself from within

l’heure bleue, hour of doorsteps lit by milk

le musée hypothétique

lace patterned after frost flowers

language from chance to chance

languid at the edge of the sea

lays itself open to immensity

leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers along the road

left everything left all usual worlds behind

library, lilac, linens, litany

lifting the wounded

light and the reverse of light

light impaled on the peaks

light issuing from the wind’s open wounds

light mottling the forest floor, crows leaving one limb for another

light of cinder blocks, meal trays

light of inexhaustible light

lighted paper sacks sent downriver to console

like the handkerchief road

like the whispering in a convent garden

like tomb flowers, the ossuary’s skull works

lilac and globeflower, clouds islanding the tilled fields

linked as flame to burning coal, as one candle lighted from another

listening to the stove mice and chimney swallows

little rain holes where the bullets went, rains crater the field, raising each a ring of soot, striking the catch pails and stabbing the tarpaulin.

we live in fog tents, awake, whispering what could once be written on a sliver of rice

lost in paper, shellfire

lupine wind, lingering daylight

lute music written for severed hands

manuscripts in the cold part of the house

matchbooks flaring in a blank window

matinal, mirage, mosaic

meaning did not survive that loss of sequence

memory does not interfere

memory the presence of the no-more

metal soup pots hung to dry, crazed porcelain basins

mirrors, vials, furnaces

misprision of moments lifted from their concealment

moments of rain ascend in the manner of smoke

more ominous than any oblivion

mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears

mud from the bowels of the city

mud from the disheveled night

music loosening floor tiles, a moon washed in earthly light, the dawn sirens calling men to the mines

music of the hurrying fountains

must release the dead from bondage

must rise from the dead while we live

my dear, I think yes

my father crossed the field and stood

my hair a cold flag of rain

my hands coated with tomb dust

my mother’s hand broken by a fierce wind

my own: I was utterly there. and when I came back I was still there

naked beneath our names, thrown up by the wit-lost

near dawn, near the river wasn’t it? if one of us

near the lake, where the fireweed was

neither a soul nor a body

neither for us nor near itself

never repeating itself

nevertheless, noumenon, november

new pasts, whole aeons are invented

night shift in the home for convalescents

nightshirt, razor strop, boot-heel

night-voiced viola