The Laughter of the Sphinx

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The Laughter of the Sphinx Page 2

by Michael Palmer


  We pry open its

  head to peer in

  cut out its heart

  sever its sex

  to dissect to possess

  The mute carter sings

  by night of such things

  along the way

  His cart is full

  his cart is empty

  one and the same

  Tomb of Aimé Césaire

  I mourned a person who turned out

  not to be dead

  Of that what is to be said

  Surgical noise of the city

  Sentence and song under earth

  I wept for something lost

  a dawn or a dusk or a thought

  a thing that couldn’t be bought

  Sun throat cut

  Woman removing a glove

  And the body at once naked

  and veiled

  waiting and waiting for what

  Coma Berenices above the bay

  sea wrack beneath

  Speech of the bone

  and of the polychrome wing

  speech of the leaf descending

  and of the rubble in a ruined field

  Words have their lives apart

  I mourned a person who turned out

  not to have died

  between a feral sky

  and a flooded shore where

  a wave was frozen in mid-air

  Sounds for Times Bones

  (among the dancers)

  Such as we are, entering

  Such as we are, in place, moving in place

  Such as we are, departing

  As we were as we are

  As a leaking roof floods the stage

  we become swimmers, waders

  As the power fails

  we sing Dancing in the Dark

  In the dark

  a rabbit leaps out of a hat,

  a top hat,

  clowns emerge from a tiny car,

  countless clowns

  numerous as stars

  in the cartoon sky,

  the invisible night sky

  In the dark

  the past crosses the stage

  sipping from an emerald cup

  and the night sun dances,

  the day moon dances,

  star throwers dance

  in the ancient stone

  Stones in the stream

  roll drunkenly,

  beheaded Orpheus, Orpheus unsexed

  sings in the stream,

  Osiris in the Atef crown

  gathers up his limbs

  Mosquitoes dance

  The Man with Two Bodies, the Bearded Lady . . .

  The King of Pentacles

  and the Queen of Wands . . .

  The Joker dances,

  the Hanged Man,

  the Knight and the Page

  The Book of Hours dances in solitude,

  so, and the green of serpentine,

  the cliff swallow, the adamant child,

  the echoing crowds

  amid the burning buildings

  in the streets and public squares

  And at a certain moment, so,

  the Ice Queen begins to dance

  frozen in place

  each stare, each gesture precise,

  never a smile

  She is the Queen of Ice

  there where past and present

  become perfectly aligned

  as if beyond time

  And she sings

  “To begin is to begin to end”

  And so time dances,

  the body of time,

  the bones sculpted by time

  wobble and dance

  and time’s eyes watch,

  watch as the seas rise,

  laugh as the seas rise,

  and the speakers are silent

  though the words speak themselves

  and the net of nerves

  trembles, dances

  as it did and as it will,

  and the syllables

  dance in The Devil’s Dictionary,

  the naked letters dance

  They cannot know what tale they tell

  in the dark, entering

  such as they are, departing,

  moving, moving through a place

  that is moving, the players,

  the few and the many,

  feeling their way

  Storm

  Basho by my bedside

  these many years

  Little wonder

  the roof is leaking

  (for R.H.)

  Unter den Linden

  A visitor passing

  gazes at the silence

  between the cordate leaves

  of the lime trees

  along that avenue where once

  And then among the leaves

  wind-scorched, tremorous

  a swell of bird song

  saying nothing at all

  to the visitor passing

  (Berlin June 2012)

  In Memory of Ivan Tcherepnin

  So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.

  They are mangled girders in a field,

  a field of flowers, echo of hooves,

  heavy-metal of tanks,

  music’s lost memory.

  In the enveloping mist

  our shoes squealing

  upon the paving stones

  while winding through

  your Paris streets,

  which one of us said,

  The absolute

  secret of art

  lies in the tongue

  of a shoe?

  Who said, The true

  secret of art

  resides in the gaze

  of a cat,

  and that’s that?

  Which one of us asked,

  Is this the buried sound

  of the future-past?

  Do electrons still sing

  when no one is listening?

  (A little stoned perhaps?)

  We spoke of corpses

  waving batons, hierophants

  professing poems,

  as the mist cloaked our words

  and mid-summer night

  measure by measure

  finally arrived.

  Ivan Alexandrovich,

  is it only the fugitive things

  that ravel the cells

  and ring through the air,

  le va et le vient as you put it,

  the slow rise of a half-step,

  followed by falling semi-tones,

  in a day of one birth and one death?

  So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.

  They are street calls and cries

  and the promises of bone,

  and the bright sightless eye

  at the flower’s brief heart.

  Call

  Call it paradise or end-of-days

  voiceless either way—the brief

  though long-seeming dream

  We scan the high plains, Elena,

  for the fevered travelers

  weary, onyx-eyed

  travelers in caravans

  bearing guns and gold

  bright promises of jade

  scented oils and healing herbs

  pelts of elk and bear

  and—strange to our ears—

  the high-pitched, quavering

  songs in exotic tongues

  perhaps canticles of desire or lamentation

  prayers perhaps that
the journey end well

  that darkness and light find their balance

  in the passage from dark to dark

  So the severed words rang out

  in the gathering dark

  as the figures disappeared

  beyond the faint arc

  of the indescribable world

  Goes on goes gone came the thought:

  salt sands boundary stones nebulae

  ferrous cliffs bone beds solar discs

  And there it ends, Elena,

  “a scene or dream with no meaning”

  so the silent dream insists

  night birds passing

  all glimpsed through a clouded lens

  Now it is I

  who cannot grasp a pen

  Encounter

  nelle parole

  che incontra

  non trova

  che frammenti

  giovanna sandri, from incontro

  Together we walked

  beneath a field

  of stars effaced

  in a city

  strange to both

  We spoke

  a third language

  not knowing

  the other’s first

  Our nearness

  such as it was

  grew thus

  in a shared distance

  a dome of limbs

  net of tongues

  We apportioned

  each to each

  the mild night

  the random calls

  the thread of thought

  Among the shuttered bookstalls

  by the embankment

  we passed

  hand to hand the halves

  of broken coins

  the one from the future

  one the past

  and the one

  coin unmoored from time

  the last

  Call the Makers

  Call the makers before they’re gone

  Tell them

  It ain’t worth the candle

  ain’t worth a song

  Untitled

  (Jerusalem April 2013)

  A poem (since that’s

  what it called itself)

  left me behind at the Damascus Gate

  It was it said one of a kind

  It rained dry rain within this poem

  at the gate of stone

  and snowed a snow of burning words

  with ancient scars at their hearts

  The gate opened and the gate came closed

  opened and endlessly closed

  even through those nightly dreams

  when the women of the song approached

  one by one

  to offer here a silken limb

  there a sidelong glance or searing thought

  My dictionary held no word for snow

  no word for song or stone

  My dictionary startled me with its gaze

  as the children by the gate

  sang in an unknown tongue

  of a man so very very old

  who once had a farm and a field

  in the chalk-colored valley below

  a field of olives and date palms and goats

  The children chanted ee-aye-ee-aye-o

  ee-aye-ee-aye-ee-aye

  ee-aye-ee-aye o riven sky

  their voices sounding across the valley floor

  They sang hello good-by

  I left a poem behind at the Damascus Gate

  It was it said one of a kind

  I swore to return sometime

  though I knew it would be gone

  Shrine

  (Hong Kong)

  The plastic

  bodhisattvas

  outnumbered us

  on the climb

  to enlightenment

  Did

  Did she seduce him

  with her knowledge of Greece

  and each of its islands

  Did he seduce her

  with compliments

  about the taste of her tears

  Their discussion

  of the Ars amatoria

  went very well

  Their discussion

  of the Ars amatoria

  proceeded badly

  Their words

  grew heated

  then chilled

  A sudden sound

  from outside

  startled her

  A sudden sound

  from outside

  excited him

  A night bird possibly

  with the yellowest of eyes

  and slowly rowing wings

  Did she say then

  only when the two

  have become one

  do they discover

  the absolute

  invisibility of the other

  even as their throats fill

  with the salt syllables

  of the other

  Amber-eyed owl

  all the while

  keeping time

  Untitled

  (27 vi 2013)

  Unwording—

  he thought—

  the page

  swept clean

  Prose for Times Bones

  We all wanted a song and the song could mean anything . . .

  We all wanted a song and the song might mean nothing . . .

  Might sound between dream and waking . . .

  Might carve a body out of autumn air, the leaves coloring, bowing to time . . .

  What do we make of it, the tango of our thoughts over time, the arabesque, the Great Wall and the message wall, the walls being built and the walls falling, the wall of memory with its glimpses and crumbling stones . . .

  The fault lines in Prague, the formalities in Tokyo, the Chicago winds, the blistering heat and bone-deep cold, the moments grasped and the moments lost, the several bodies as one and the one as many . . .

  Sometimes the streets would be empty . . .

  Sometimes crowds would gather along the avenues and in the public squares, and they too would chant and they too would dance, and the walls would open and the moment become clear . . .

  And the tale?

  Of the shorebirds and the salt breeze? The sound of Miss Jacobi’s tears? And what of those other birds, large and small, flamboyant and plain of feather, gathering at the city gates, the rustle of their wings, was that twenty years ago? Can we imitate again their calls, their darting and gliding, their settling to earth, their love-making and quarrels? Does the kingfisher on a wire tell a tale? Does the osprey’s cry? Do the pigeons in the bell-tower mark time? Do the whisperers still whisper over the years? Sometimes even a kettle will sing and often the waters will dance: the Vltava, the Rhine, the Tiber, the Seine, the Missouri, the Hudson, the Neva and the Wye . . .

  These waters that we’ve sat beside; these waters that we’ve crossed. And the machines of industry, the machines of war: their song, their dance? And so, where lies the tale? In the curl of an arm? The arching of a back? A glance? A leap or a turn? A thought carved in air? The emptiness of space itself, shaped only by light? Shaped only by silence? We take a breath, take a step, then another. So the tale. Told. Untold.

  A Dream of Sound Inside the Mountain

  (after Anish Kapoor)

  It is too brief

  this life

  inside the mountain

  where headless horsemen sing

  fevered songs

  of self and war

  When did we first notice

  the trees of mottled bone,

  when first hear

  the c
awing of crows,

  contention

  of the orchard orioles,

  the sleepers’ echoing cries,

  rehearsing their final words,

  resisting final dreams

  (These dreams were mine

  and not mine

  say the walls of stone,

  walls of the poem)

  Hedge-crickets sing

  and the white whale

  its whiteness sings

  in the stone dream

  and the lost hours have each

  their silent song

  in the heat of bee time

  and the shock of desire

  those times when time is not

  and the endlessly shifting stones

  carelessly speak

  and rain floods the rutted roads

  It is too long

  this spiral life

  It is too brief

  How the wind and light pass

  through our bodies of glass

  Perfezione della neve

  Teach me the secrets of that

  language you speak

  I entreated

  her

  Honor (O.M.)

  Honor

  the poison

  of the almond

  Untitled

  (15 viii 2013)

  While dying

  you grew

  as translucent

  as bone china

  and your mind took flight

  through space and time

  as minds

  should always do

  Song

  Festival night

  We climb the candle one last time

  The wind from the west

  knows us best

  We climb the candle

  one last time

  Blood-streaked horses

  flare across the dream

  They know us best

  who know us least

  The waters rise

  as high as the flame

  They are a test

  And this text -

  and this text I live in

  is a difficult one

  she mentioned in the dark

  as we spoke

  of syllables and suns

  and sightless horses on the run

  Festival night

  We climb

  a final time

  and if it is a song

  it is a song

  not to be sung

 

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