a conversation in poetry

Dominique Hecq #1 Moods  

A poet’s speech begins a great way off 

A poet is carried far away by speech 

Marina Tsvetaeva 

[i] 

It recedes from us, this old land, until it starts to take place among historical figments and myths and metaphors—with no reality but a haunting dream as its morphological envelope. There is an extraordinary tangle of legends and rumours which have the right sort of grave relevance when you are watching the sun swooping on political and poetical abstractions. 

[ii] 

Because there is nothing to hold it but the wind, the plane bobs up and down. Swings from left to right. Lurches forward. Ascends like an albatross. We are airborne, while in reality we are not born of air at all—just carried through it. In flight. Suspended between life and death, like so many numbers bracketed off the laws of algebra. Dots usurping entropy. The alphabet. 

[iii] 

† Alphabet. From the Latin alphabêtum, itself derived from the Greek álpha bêta: the whole.  

† Spanish cristus: the beginning of the alphabet as book-learning to the greater glory of God. 

† The alphabet itself. From A to Z. All-encompassing. Imperialistic. Definitely non-entropic.  

† Lexicons of air. Words and their fictions poeming worlds poeming whorls of real dreams. 

[iv] 

Language swallows time. And time swallows us. Like some unsatiated mother intent on devouring her progeny back into herself, quaerens quem devoret, Kronos keeps eating his children. Mere substitution. As my companion does, her cell phone a dummy: mort, muerto. The dead body. We are all frightened of death. We know that planes do drop out of the sky. 

[v] 

I want to write a poem away from death. This is absurd, of course. All writing is birthed by death. Tends towards death. Tends the dead with curlicues of ink: so many crests borne above shields laid on wreaths before the finishing of stone in between furrows curling like waves, dreams, fingers of smoke. Singed feathers un-fanning broken taboos on a sudden wish wing. 

[vi] 

I begin in the present. Because there is nothing to hold me but the wind and my hubris. See how I fly to the sun, white feathers all ruffled and riffling the sky, eyes intent on the spark that will redeem human folly. I am the white raven. Heavenly voices in my head corral a fugal chorus. Hear their crystal cascade cool the heat. Imagine… Fire surging up to the skies. 

[vii]  

My companion distracts me. She chitters and giggles into her phone, oblivious to other passengers. Godlike, I could hush her in a poem. Subject her to the laws of John Cage’s ‘Lecture on Silence’. Create her space-time, soul-memory. Make her vanish into the mouth of time. Into funnels of matter so tangled as being buried deep in God’s wrinkles, or deeper still. 

[viii] 

To write this poem away from death. The absurdity of it. All writing is birthed by death. Tends towards death. Tends the dead with curlicues of ink oil led pencil beam driving light: so many crests borne above shields laid on wreaths before the finishing of stone in between furrows curling like waves, dreams, fingers of smoke lap-lapping memory. Ebbing. Flowing. 

[ix]  

Imagine layers upon layers of paint in calligraphic brushstrokes. Some thin and drippy; some thick and matte. Ekphrastic loops tying time as one does an umbilical cord. To saturate time. Spacetime  Memory  is  Immaterial  Memory is Soul  River  Riverring  Disappearing  Salt rivulets  Not one   Universal prospect   Escaping  Will  Resurrecting  Funnels of matter  Dust.  

[x]  

She, who could be my own daughter has fallen asleep. Outside the night is alight with millions of bright eyes, opening and closing. Mátia mou, my eyes, dearest. Mata, eye and blade: the eye-child in the apple of my eye—my love and downfall—a common feature of all languages, a semantic universal, a double-edged sword. A metaphorical entanglement: Amy. 

  

[xi] 

I would end in the presentpastfuture. Because there is nothing to hold me. See how I fly to the sun, white feathers all ruffled and ruffling the sky, eyes on the spark that will redeem human folly, hankering after poetry that has the quality of mutedness about it. I am the white raven whose heavenly voice uncages a funereal chorus. Hear its crystal cascade cool the heat.  

[xii] 

Imagine layers upon layers of paint in calligraphic brushstrokes of seaspray hair. Ekphrastic loops tying the omphalos of time. The suturation of time. Spacetime. Memorysoul. A river mouthing salt rivulets not one universal possibility escaping will Spacetime resurrecting funnels of matter so tangled as being one buried deep and deeper still in broken time dust. Us.  

[xiii] 

Lights flicker. Flick on. Obliterate the eyes of the night. Produce a kaleidoscope of kinetic images as trolleys trundle through the aisles, rubbish is fetched, landing cards dispensed, smiles bestowed, earphones retrieved. Seatbelts fastened. Click clack… An ambition of mine… Click clack… Dark. Quiet. Sigh. Thud. The aircraft touches ground. Shudders. Stops. 

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