Coda
what were you thinking that night
as you sat at your desk some desk
in some German or Danish hotel
I ask because all I find is
what is mechanical
a rare inclusion of Psychology
did you want to stay there why
or is this inquest for what isn’t
a depth and person that wasn’t
I’m only wondering where you are
might have been amidst this text
that has turned a certain shade
of things past adorned with the unsaid
*
is it plausible
that you should have had nothing to write
down or nothing to say that blank afternoon
perhaps what you wanted to say
was too perilous
I would prefer to think that
to imagine your existence
more than a thin shadow in the palace corridor
I know you can’t tell me
what did you trade for ink
there must have been some thing
within or beyond the perimeter
of the palace walls
*
the hindrance of a human lifespan
rules out a meeting
yet there are people I have met
and have never
who did you know
who would you be and have been
when all is brushed aside
*
2008 less 116
anybody there?
*
a dream often attaches itself to your journey
especially in its telling to others
but you weren’t one of them
were you
and did that have any effect
being asked in or to remain in
I don’t know I just wonder
if you knew superfluous what it means to be
standing in the dim corners of someone else’s life
did you feel it too
in those long hours
inconsequence envelops
*
and who was the he?
the he that you never quite get to
ubiquitous tales of gardeners
sneaking around with the lady’s maid
the Crown Prince and the governess
or better yet the cook
the more unsuitable the match
the better
what suited you who
was there a he
a him
someone that found his way through
your line
there must have been
someone that wasn’t
of the royal schedule
a few segments of time unmarked
with someone who remains some one
I’d certainly like to think
*
the supposition that if only
errors could placate other errors
do you have any to name?
for this might lead us to an altogether different mark
*
in mind or geography
did you meet darkness
stumble from the fog
think the day was coming after you
I’m more prone to panic myself
but wonder if you ever landed on that dim road
did you hide out
I like to
I know you said Amsterdam was
black and cloudy
but what I’m asking is
was it the city the port
of Amsterdam
or the young woman in it?
*
at the lake which was called a sea
you said all the boundary lines were there
Austria and Switzerland and Baden-Würtemmberg
a site of convergence
what it would have been
what was it like?
could you see the lines?
feel them?
did the trees know the difference?
*
I have thought of your thought
on the institution the idyll adornments
and cold castle aside
did you marry or not
and what comes from former the latter
I have tried for a record of you
I haven’t got one
then no record is record
to all who think you flawed
so as not to arrange a man
I said yes no the time I was asked
is that the same?
were you invited to be part of?
were you flawed or
did you join the association?
*
I have been trying to get to
a small unseen grain
otherwise known to me as
the silent you
what went on in the Netherlands, the Suez canal
Luxor, Hammerfest’s North Pole, Turin, Trondheim,
Stockholm, Lund, Copenhagen, Heidelberg, Carlsruhe,
Cairo, Helsingborg, and the Trosa archipelago
all soundless places?
was it diffidence
am I crazy to write as if you might call back
it’s just that
all the people now
they don’t and easily
*
I recognize the sea was at fault
the thing that made you awake
but beyond awake
where did your mind go
middle of the night theories
did you have any ?
you never said
and on a night like that
out on a distressed sea
one imagines things a certain way
all passengers in a certain frame
awake and wondering
how things got to be where they were going
hours before the stillness would come
and light would show itself
at least to some
did you see ?
*
did you feel safety amidst the trees
of the Norwegian forest
I think I might have
I’ve felt that here far
from your mark
thing about trees
how they carry themselves in a way
that makes them without country
or label and how their greenness
and general molecules
mean nothing but
shade and accommodation
to those who stand and breathe before
and from
*
“I should elect to have you
not an artifact that once was yours”
I wrote this once
repeat it to you once twice
add a slight alteration
“I should elect to meet you
not an artifact that once was yours”
after all all is not meant to be behind glass
*
still and a hundred more
all logic pushed to the reaches
I wish we might sometime meet