In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Son et Lumière
  • Richard Deming (bio)

I wander all night in my vision …

—Walt Whitman, “The Sleepers”

All night I walk as a ghostamong the lost and the living.From the river, swollen past its banks,up through to the city’s center,

there where people ebb and flow, singly,or in groups, choosing their meanshaltingly, like a nearly forgotten catechism,call it love or anger, I make my way.

There are nights woven from thick hoursspun during daylight’s fretfulness.Stand out of the sun, someone saysand evening ripens like a fig.

Think now of what fashions the hour:what comes from what. The moonwaxes and wanes. I didn’t askto be here, to become a formthat becomes its own end.

What if life is just that: leaning at the horizon?By that I mean a wished-for hurtling forward,the only solution a dissolution.The streetlights each curve downwardand stretch far past the bridges and avenues,

past the café where the student opens thencloses her book. More light, she says to the waiter.Some days it’s easier to tallythose furtive thoughts that have no futurerather than those, like the noon sun’s glare, [End Page 145]

that swallow every shadow beneath our feet.I place a branch upon the palm of my right handand cannot in certain terms prove to myselfI am not dreaming. The smell of burnt porkcarries through the alleyway behind an atelier.

A man I want to believe walked past a bay window.I wanted to believe most of all that he remainedthere because it proves, simply, I am at this placeat any ordinary hour of any ordinary day.This is what it means to be someone.

If I were to speak just now,my throat would catch, my voicefalter and stammer. It couldn’t becolder, a father on some sitcomplaying in the 24-hr health club insists.

On the contrary, there’s no endto how we never do measurethe shape of enough, my friend.Divide what you will listen toby the ratio of all you have lost.

From mud and sticks and twine and error,I built a shameful twinto move through a squalid winter,to share all manner of guilt.

I’ll watch as he steps forth,smelling of ash and amnesia, of sexand leaves, of all I needn’t feel.This one will never sleep nor walk a crooked mile.

I forget it isn’t simply a way to avoidanother’s outrage. Sitting quietly, handsfolded, one over the other: it only seemedlike waiting. The fingernails lengtheningand hardening into fine gray slate. [End Page 146]

Nextness fills window after window—one scene, then another—with a disappointment or wonder.An eyelid flutters involuntarily.Not even this in vain.

With our eyes we distinguisheverything—sleep from day, thusdays from weeks to years. And if time,then loss—hence love. There are giftswe are given so they may be taken away.

At the edge of the forest beside the citywild boars, black as pitch,drag small animals into the brush.Why is this night different from all other nights?

All right, a still life, perhaps:Compotier Flush with Cruelty.Paint, a pear, glass, and so much green    aghast with longing.It makes a claim, already, for beauty—a reason for looking that telescopesthese angles past the edges of the table.

It needn’t have been so bad, and it isn’t, not really.Given enough time. This afternoon, for example,there were lemons in a bowlfilled with water and the scenthung thickly on thick red curtains. I slept. And so.

Cigarette smoke brushing the skin is enough.The one maple tree in the yard is enough.The crow on the dock at the lake’s edge    and the rowboat, moving and rocking,and the long cloud above, these are enough.Your breath, even now, is enough. [End Page 147]

In late summer, from a dry field will comesome persistent tune, locusts, perhaps,or the husk of longing...

pdf

Share