Drafts 1–38, Toll

Draft 32: Renga

Draft 32: Renga Snarled light, snap, bare. Of golden glass light trees, of Knots to which one is apprenticed, of split splints intransigent, no beginning beginning. no beginning but emptiness full, fulling in-betweens. What twisting ribbon (time? or light? or words?) is it Aglows Astripe? That glows, stripes and branches, while bursts of gold-glass light snarls complicate "the tangle of it." The tangle-basket's split stone lid rests on plaited shims of bark194 Brush twist total. The words' singlestreamer makes boundaries from overlays, from twigs and space. Borders and overlaysbetweentwigsand space Small reds and Slight greenings. Sideshadows, caught arrays of them there were,and darkling crossbeams through which— Through which (come) night-rems and day-vectors plumy and plummy blues. This (thus) can (n)ever register "it" enough. Can never register it enough, its cross-greens, purple croci or cerulean squill, its (g)utteralsor (c)harms— these waterybuds, its fingers in orfi that awaken manifolds. Manifolds awake, 195 wrestle, rustle the restlessness of it "the back and forth of early sounds, small cries," the "little owl of the waste places" fat squat that robin. Fat and squint that robin's rufous flair, parking-lights white, that lands into a dapple scattered on the feathery field marches around. One plot. Subplot. They are always saying— can you write this story? you're a writer. What story? o world whirr were or was Children, pretending birds, yellCHIRP. Kids flap birds, Whirrr chirrr wheerr T with merle noir warble, rouge gorge warble, wobble, braiding these sounds with tiny dissonant ones. Tiny dissonant plaited irritants 196 hint at self-similar melodies that chain from leaf-bare trees, meshed trees, pip-bar waswhere? meshed trees (w)here woodpeckers nab the births of slugs and bugs (w)here words as words from the diction-laden (g)round pass beyond words. To pass beyond words yet construct linkage,s meaning,s in unspoken space. For still it's reasonable / Reasonable isit? that dark lines, inexplicable in every force and fusion, intersect. "the dark lines which negate them and intersect too tentative, the figures too small: but this is the point: the work is its tentativeness , its smallness, its off-ness, what some may call lack." lack, lack in each fragment 797 Call the smallness minority or luck. Whatever Littleness -ness from dark and hidden lines. Dark line, hidden, limns young crescent sliver round its own curbed orb: in truth, a dark light, the one to come the one before. Whether it's one before or one to come— "little" isodd, the 5-odd inching hand at the horizon holds "us" as weare. Someone standing out in the night. Stands still under the hemisphere of night estimating arc'd degrees from the horizon to seeHale-Bopp, 40million mile tail, take up one iota of thesky an inch or two to the eye. An inch or two to theeye spinning and streak at the leeof a dome, or what weseeas such: our pitchblack shining— scale, word, concept, call. 198 Opening yod, the book isawake. Opening the yod that goeswith this space the book isawake enters a tiny point. The-point. ofthe-The The-the. A-the. What a book! Presenting streaks in light of celestial smoke by folding black A'sinside white the's. Black ABC's code inside this white fold, that littleslip frill and sweethoney ruffle multiple registers that travel to the serif of one letter. The serif of one letter or one red dot dripping aflower-fashionedfractal over the peony core. Then at edges, everything'smidrash. 199 Right at the edge, midrash piled on midrash, Pelion on Ossa, to highlite the vitreous floaters with comment and interp. And there's the "yesterday I" had a diaristicimpulse but it didn't work out, now, did it? or Did it? Can't tell?Blame the unwritableoddities ofjourney—"the daily"; blame the persistent bad manners of the dark horse mashing the other one in the yoke, bumping sidewaysinto—o that horse!—the gloss. The gloss also comes bumping and travelling sideways full of "enjabments" that doth make the poem show as such it givesa little poke "watch me go under" "watch me go under" mossyflipdunking bell-note; stone plump, plunk. "watch me stay under" 200 under or blunder? memorized ormesmerized? oculist or occultist? annotated or anointed? Call und risposto. See Strange-Handed...