The Unfinished, and: The Unfinished

78 MARK DUCHARME THE UNFINISHED If you plunged my heart into a river Like Jeanne Moreau plunged Into a river in that movie Which is not lyric poetry in the age of Guantanamo But is more like memories which collect across An image of what still is lost If you plunged a river into my heart It would not be a river of executive privilege Like we said, there are no rivers Only detours & historical circumstance Which you don’t understand since you weren’t born in what we said we meant & There is no here impressed upon your fingertips Are there fingertips after the age of Guantanamo Is there touch eroding privilege Until we know that noon has settled into dusk Just as in that movie which has been called lyrical Both men who have their hearts broken are also soldiers To remind us that even love is still barbarism If you Plunge my heart into that river Which is the river in the movie in the dreams we aren’t having In the age of Guantanamo, at which we aren’t culpable Lacking historical evidence in the poem which does not say anything But drowns out the conventions of speechlessness Where we still aren’t implicated because this is too private & Lyrical, in the at-risk noise At the dearth of night where everything’s teeming & We still aren’t here—& there were never feelings Implicated our session is over In the historic silence lost against noise At which everything we need is lost, but touch, which has not lasted 79 MARK DUCHARME THE UNFINISHED Like thinking under your skin Even when the song hurts Still erect, but foregrounding Some logic of transitional reply Is still not private—the earth devours This, this thing as yet unbroken Invaded, in all public landscapes Toward which we are in flight To have been a nun in a former lifetime Is not to grow quiet painting disappeared fishermen Under the abandoned cities Like some logic of transitional reply Imagine another fucked-up noise At which schemes are somehow blown wide open Although I have lost my most prescient noise, this ghost— The window of where I leave you behind ...