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to Raphaëlle & Julien
I
yet –
but what were you saying
on the forecourt at Phaistos?
– a stream of silent words
waves of transparent silences
– on the flagstone at the theater’s edge
facing the field of olive trees – their gray syllables
with that sun, like a full stop:
interrogation with no other substance
than the all-presence of that stop
or affirmation nailed to the sky,
the most insoluble of questions
& Ida, the holy mountain in the background
grumbling a bunch of gut gurgles at us,
belching gusts, a storm, and again:
great cloud draperies roiling
with other voices than those of the cave’s god
couplings
of rough stone voices and stale
stable stench of a goat-milk gorged runt,
tantrums of a filthy kid loving its own stench
with the limpid voice of another than yourself
who looked like you and faded
– so what were you telling us,
you, already lost to yourself
now become a legible thread over time
body reduced to your gaze on things
heart shut already, but feeling life
there
in what it at that very moment
had of immobility, prehensibility
yes, how tell, what were you, already absent from self –
saying, self’s nullity, already?
II
nothing –
nothing not dust
& that light
itself resembling itself
as much as you, so like your reflection
your absence from yourself transparency
that light polishing these empty ruins
& your gaze turned on Messara Valley
plain at rest under sky at rest
& dust of centuries, yes lustration
white baptism, absent gods
both blind & blinding gods
great wash of light on the flow of time
oh sure you enter that solution of desiccated acids,
you are live flesh, yet dry
you don’t belong to yourself, you display nothing of being
you will certainly have gone back to your plain atom state
in the infinite moment which follows this condensation
above the Phaistos platform
& eagles scream & the air deepens
on your trajectory you cross
that slow, breathable air
mineral like you
solemnly disturbed by birds’ flight feathers
III
the drunkard, you
there
on the raw flagstone
on the depot of time
on the sharp crest where dry air
battles the clouds downing from the mountain
he gets high on that sun
he has found the equilibrium of the secular boozer
& the true balance between affirming and decomposing
between fable and reality
and that shot of dark, sharp clarity which creates him
keeps him going that way
on the cusp –
everything concurs to delimit his circle of certainties
& to terminate
the air flickers
on the cusp
the drunkard and the air he breathes are
reliably sourced
& their ends
identical
tabula rasa
IV
then the storm, yes
the cataract then
has taken out the sky
your life since your start
has been a function of these rain showers
you only write well under showers,
the irony of those waterfalls –
visible only the wall of dark water streaming down on creation
ravines have gobbled down rubble, ditches trash
rivulets mourning abundantly, packed with dead sprouts
on the edge of the road, raging garbage dumps
the whole mountain has barfed out its decay, its inflammations
toward the gorges, at Omalos, sky
has married gravel
(will’ o’ the’ wisps
under headlights, it’s the red eyes
of sheep sleeping
on the flooded tarmac
– once more this farce, played out
in the theater where shadows run to bring down
the platitudes thought of as basic truths:
get going now, go soak
in the stream of mud
you’ll only earn more merit
by catching breath, lungs
cleansed by the wave
If you lie down here, be aware that your back, ribs, loins
will also know how to remind you there is no dawn in the sky
but for armfuls of violent night you’ll have had to digest
spit it all out then, get rid of dross
wash the sky’s sewers, your burden of sky
come back once again onto the flagstone
where this sun cooks & roasts the residues of time
V
allow it allow
the knife’s blade on the ram’s throat, –
what splendor
that black blood!
lean, lean
your head over the pit
once split open the bellies of the arrogant pretenders
the traveler went down into cellars with servant girls
to get drunk on rough wine, and the girls washed
the blood off his body, and he got back into his boat
after honoring the spouse, and the place where he was born
and cutting all ties
double faithfulness
the pit is open, the pit is open
shadows from down there mutter their vanities
number their fainting, the impossible possibles
grasses rise in armfulls to close their mouth
extremely slow animals come to orchestrate the theater
that knife blade drew on the cavern’s stomach
& you, you’re going to go down to take your turn bathing
you’ll throw yourself from the headland,
dumb bundle of drunken blood, bag of winds
with Africa’s sea in the background
& huge slides of sand at the edge of savannahs
& those springs & those resting places for the migratory
back from the north, in the dawns’ arms
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