In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011

Fin Amor

105 F I N A M O R Usage is more powerful than reason. —castiglione, The Courtier c h â t e au i f If love if then if now if the flowers of if the conditional if of arrows the condition of if if to say light to inhabit light if to speak if to live, so if to say it is you if love is if your form is if your waist that pictures the fluted stem if lavender if in this field if I were to say hummingbird it might behave as an adjective here if not if the heart’s a flutter if nerves map a city if a city on fire if I say myself am I saying myself (if in this instant) as if the object of your gaze if in a sentence about love you might write if one day if you would, so if to say myself if in this instance if to speak as another— if only to render if in time and accept if to live now as if disembodied from the actual handwritten letters m-y-s-e-l-f if a creature if what you say if only to embroider—a city that overtakes the city I write. a n a l l e g o r y o f d o u b t after giacomo balla Crossing a fiddle, a bow pulls, and the antique century renews itself: steamliner pushing off into the newsreel when film was young . . . these strings sound fog, then a tug, then a single ray piercing dawn. A crash of metal over sea, rocks, trees, gardens and cut stone. C chord as ground. The chipped patina told a story of earth’s settlement. A Roman bell . . . it’s getting late, the wind picks up; in her dream she told of shattered windows, prisms, a ribbon above the city, a deer drinking from it with a chandelier for antlers . . . she said my love is like modernity, whirring, throwing switches, a discus, a silent particle when the atomic night, the parabolic night, cold, no longer water over stone splashing through trees under stars . . . the quartet is often a stand of pine, a confetti streamer unraveling, tumbling arabesques of glee, sometimes a marionette, sometimes twine pulled 106 107 through a dixie cup. A waxy aria . . . my dream is a picnic by a winter lake she said. In full regalia she said—silk rugs, carriages, hats and plates, a toe of gold in a marble field, fox in the snow . . . folks were dressed in colonial fashion, then I knew it was colonial times. There was going to be a marriage. In her dream she was not looking for a bridal dress, but working in words, she said, she found her dress . . . the circus is coming. The organ’s pipes reach even here when we walk our lute strings into town, simple words in a bramble of words, let them build to a commotion now we’ve learned music is not for kings . . . O let the sun pass over me. Overhead, strike my wrists, knees. Here. I will slake the baubles from my milky gown. The willow spear is green, she said. The stars abound. s o m e t h i n g i n b l u e Blue everywhere in the sounds we make dissolves, a breeze failing to reach you. A failed history unaware that the ground is also a factor. Arbitrary the form of things at times. Do you ever think why ocean in the eyes? The blue of Ophelia’s portrait. It’s easy to read but it’s also easy to read (thinking that) and the detail is caught in an iris fleck. Blue. Felt sheets of sound die in distance—a music failing to teach you another language—the pupa crackles as it enters a world. All those champions, dressed up in a hero’s skirt, a long cape with stars on their boots meant nothing then, not the least kerpow. Pure noise—silent particle-wave—a hole in space enters the room, an iris opening to record the darkness. This is a blue unlike any other. The waves tumble sheets, a blue wash touches everything. Inside us an ocean, a seashell of sound in the ear, kisses are like that—blue, outside, on a stair. 108 [3.133.109.211] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 04...