Carolyn Forche - Blue Hour

the endless, unbroken lines

the evacuation of ghosts

the flautist’s breath in a stairwell

the flumes of white phosphorus marking the city

the for and for

the forbidden world hidden behind it

the four-a.m. bombing of a newspaper office

the fragility of social orders

the furthest edge

the future destroying us

the ganglia of a train map, metastasizing cities

the going-forth, the as-yet-cannot-be-heard

the greater and lesser wings the ground luminosity

the hand moving of its own accord across the page

the happy life life itself

the hidden world and its inhabitants

the hole of my mouth

the hole where my ancestor stands burning

the house, a white portrait of our having fled

the hushed chill of such a wind

the I’s time, in which things happen

the ice of reminiscence submerged in time

the immigrant disappearing into a new language

the informant’s diary of his whereabouts

the ivory of ice on the rivers

the japonica’s shadow on a telegraph pole

the life that would have ended then goes on

the light in these old photographs is a palm of rice

the light of a pocket mirror moving through trees

the little notebook of poems in the pocket of a corpse

the Lumière camera

the man tipping his hat sadly

the man tipping his hat sadly as if to say goodbye to his own mind

the mirror in her eyes giving himself back

the moon a bone-cap of ice or ivory

the moon in its clearing

the morning’s cold light on the blankets

the mortar smoke mistaken for an orchard of flowering pears

the name I am becoming

the nine lights of thought

the open well ending in its moon of water

the opening of time

the past is white near the sea

the past, which is our present

the peace of a black-windowed warehouse

the peace of the hay

the pleroma which she did not desire for herself

the plummet of a star from its darkness

the question speaks the very language of lack

the rain falls lightly now

the rescuers lift from the wreckage a child no longer a child

the revenant whi spers: forgive me if I am wrong but I could not sleep

the roads issuing mist

the roads rivered with sewage and tea-colored rain

the roofs have fallen, field flowers grow in the rooms. nevermind

the same clicking of bare limbs in wind

the same rose sold to every mourner

the secret police having risen to the stature of petty thieves

the sedimentary years

the shacks of le quartier de la guerre

the silence of a new language

the soft houses of heaven

the soldiers’ moonlit helmets

the soul cannot leave the body of a suicide until she comes

the soul weighs twenty-six grams and is migratory like the birds

the soul, enamored of greatness

the soul with its sense of destination, the soul exiled, a stranger to earth

the space between events infinite

the stench of soap boiling at the edge of a village

the sting of bleached linen

the stony space where all of this happens

the stories nested, each opening to the next

the story of empty rice sacks

the street’s memory of abandoned shoes

the streets running with a sweet gray stench

the sun a monstrance

the sun moving toward Lambda Herculis

the sun will turn into a red giant, and then into a white dwarf

the sweet stench of gangrene, a cloud of flies, in its hand a child’s necropolis

the temptation of temptation

the three hidden lights beyond the grasp of thought

the tomb into which we escape

the trains. sometimes a silent coupling

the trees: almond, annatto, sweetsop, banana, monkey-bread, bay rum, sandal bead, breadfruit, yellowsilk, camphor, candle

the trees mortared into flower

the trembling of river stones, the ignition of spirit, the firing of human thought

the trip wire in white grass at one with the footfall, the latch

the truck-rutted fields the burnt sorrow

the twenty-two bones of the skull

the uncertain hand of a lost spirit

the vanished present visible on earth

the wall of white sand and poisonous mill wastes

the way one could bathe while still covered by a square of cloth

the wet paper of flesh draped on brittle bone

the what is? gives the wrong answer

the what is? has ruined thought

the white train

the white-boned noon

the window covered with a wool blanket

the woman in the flowered robe mad with fear

the woman in your arms a lighted bedcloth

the world an accident

the world as it emerges

the world’s ensouling in a gallery of sadness

their bedclothes soaked in music

their bruises, aubergine

their refusal to accompany us further

their souls exist as their body

their souls shuttered against hope

then at dawn through the cedars

then for an hour we slip photographs from their frames, strip the walls, toss what had been our life into shipping crates

then phosphorus fell silver on the city and rained on the lettuce fields

there is a reason you have lost him. for the rest of your life you could search for it

there is no absence that cannot be replaced

there is no reason for the world

there was black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill the sack

there was no when there

there was nothing that wasn’t for sale

these are my contents

these paving stones this hymnal

these ruins are to the future what the past is to us

they bind them in rags

they climb out of the river and blacken its banks

they died along with anyone who knew who they were

they fell from heaven to earth

they go on past grief and give me a sack of beans

they lived in the carcass of the sports coliseum

they looked into the camera, into the future

they will gladly go to the precipice, but where is the precipice?

thinking against the world

this end and the beginning within it

this is a musée hypothétique:

this is a transit camp, a squatters’ camp

this is how things were for us then

this is the city. this is a photograph of the city

this is the city. this was the city

this only death can write

this open-air asylum

this ossuary of world, what is the phrase for it?

this reversal

this shattering of indifference

this sudden incipience of event—

those things are obvious which are invisible

those who have entered and have left unharmed

thoughts turned back into ink and paper

throwing light upon light

time—“a severe border guard”—becomes imaginary

time lapsed in one country is only beginning in another

time, to which we are exiled

to abandon yearning for the body

to be unquiet

to be visible to oneself

to become endlessly what one has been

to cross the field without breaking the snow

to enter into itself and to stay awake

to expose ourselves to whatever may happen

to forget once having known it

to hide, safeguard, entrust to a protected place

to know not only what is, but the other of what is

to know that the great bell is the great bell

to remain haunted

to rescue the future

to say nothing without confining ourselves to silence

to search like a sheep for salt

to see or to perish

to see other than from without

to see the world as it actually is

to walk the quays among the executed

to where a drawn lamb is hanging beheaded