STILL
(A CANTATA—OR NADA—
FOR SISTER SATAN)
Zeit ist Geld
as we say in America
and art too
buckle my shoe
to the wall
my heart to my jaw
my throat to the kestrel’s cry
Call me Digital Mike
or Mnemonic Mike
or Felonious Mike
or even better
don’t ever call
Time is money
says it all
1st chorus
And the children, who have no language,
sing:
obatai roma obatai
romatai oba romatai
They sing lee la lee
in pursuit of light
And the children, who have no knowledge
of death
sing with their darting hands
offer praise in the stubble fields
turn their faces to greet the rain
And the children, with their knowledge of death,
place sound upon sound
stone upon stone
fire upon flame
They pour sand on their heads
They bow toward the west
obatai roma obatai
“There’s no
more to say”
–Inger Christensen
There’s no there’s no there’s no
more to say
There are the minutes the hours
the pulses of the day
There are day lilies, cormorants, fretted clouds
There are the sweet smells of baking,
apples tart and mild
along the way
There is a chair of solid oak
You sit on it to write
You get up and pace
and it is late, the light
is gone, there’s a drunk
muttering by the curbside
about eyes, Why so many
eyes
ancient, babbling child, swollen,
tattered, rheumy-eyed
once hazel perhaps, hazel-eyed,
why so many hours, so many eyes
There’s no there’s no there’s no
more to say, there’s a chair
of solid oak, a desk
where you sit to write,
scent of night jasmine,
memory of a face, a voice,
body taut, short of breath, des-
perate dancer
grasping for air, never, not
ever quite enough, actias
luna, luna moth, desperately
dancing toward light, not ever
quite enough
and the page
upon the desk is white,
the desk, as it happens,
the improvised desk
also white
the plum blossom
and the night sky at times
almost white
and as to the children
erased this day
beneath a placid sky
beneath a phosphorus rain
a rain white as night
along the sandy shore
where they’d slipped away to play
for a time (Can
you tell us the time,
Venus-Phosphor, Morning Star?)
they will be long
forgotten by tomorrow
We will remember to forget them
We will be certain
to forget them
since it’s necessary
that there be no more to say
The child first learning the words
wonders what comes between the words.
And learning the words she tries to recall
what came before,
a ringing or whistling or roaring, a
kind of chorus perhaps, as of wind over water,
like the water here, near enough to see
that’s mysteriously called the Sound.
Are there sounds between the words
where all feels asleep and still?
Maybe she laughs at the thought
that the words breathe too
and that the breathing turns
right there, in the air between the words.
2nd chorus
And the ancient children of stone,
the kouroi and the korai,
their bodies are still as they sing
of what has passed and what is to come
since they know too much
of binary stars and spots on the sun,
of the tyger in the night,
the tyger burning all too bright,
the forest, the anvil and the furnace,
and the sovereign secrets
of the tongue and of the bone,
the sovereign secrets
of tongue and bone.
To the mother they soundlessly sing
Are you here or are you gone?
And they see the father dazed,
mute singer as well, brittle and bent,
effaced by time’s remains
and an elsewhere not to be named.
Sing, silent father, my brother,
in your distant tongue,
lost father, lost other.
Sing of the flesh and of the bone
and speak for the children of stone,
the kouroi and the korai
and the secrets of their smile.
From the broken tower
of the Cathedral of Our Lady
of the Holy Spectacle we watch
the rockets fall upon the small
and ever smaller figures.
They rain down in many colors,
chrome yellow, magenta, blood red
and a white whiter than white
before the attentive audience,
eager, fervent and intense
as if in a kind of trance.
The latest show
is always the greatest
until the next.
And the children sing
knowing and unknowing
in the space of the field
that is opening,
in the child’s slow time,
the rhymes of the day
and the rhymes of night,
the rhymes of still water
and those of sudden fire,
of the lamb, the dolphin and the unicorn,
and the white spider constructing a cloud.
Say apple for the first time,
say yellow apple, wagon, plum,
sea horse, flying horse, river horse
and taste mint, say mint,
watch the lantern light as it plays
across the furred walls of a barn,
the curves of a rutted path,
words, so many, made for ears?
For eyes? So many eyes, say
I, say cyan, violet, wintergreen
beneath your feet, the simple
words as they vanish
among the white oaks’
echoing shadows, the paw paws, the
sassafras with lobed leaves,
the spirals of summer thought,
sing the secrets of the stream.
for Nico
Things get lost
things whose words
can no longer be heard
Still we try to find them
and place them
inside the silences
The Emperor will get his cities,
his drummer boy lie in the snow.
–Marina Tsvetaeva
The children drum on anything
a bottle, a pan, the corpse of a car
They drum Sister Satan into the garden
They drum the dogs of war
loose upon the poppy fields
They drum whatever they can find
a skull will do, a smile, a wooden shoe,
most anything will do
these children
who are who they are
They drum the forest, the bones, the night
right up the Glass Mountain
They drum whatever they can find
They drum the silent sky
3rd chorus
And the elders as one:
I was sealed in the magic box
there to be taken
limb by limb apart
Invisible I danced
with Sister Satan
As regards her caress
you may only guess
At last I wore no mask
The seasons came the seasons went
seasons of our waking
seasons of our sleep
Where it was cold
now it was hot
Where rivers had flowed
nothing but sand
new world we had wrought
The shadows of mournful ancestors
passed across the sun
lighting that magic box
though I knew them not
Invisible we danced
Sister Satan and I
dismembered as we were
all torsos all legs all arms
still eager to please one another
while the clowns of our better natures
sang untranslatable songs
Copyright © 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 by Michael Palmer
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Many of these poems first appeared in the following publications: The American Reader, The Brooklyn Rail, Hambone, The Harvard Advocate, Lana Turner, The Ocean State Review, Phoebe, Plume, Spacecraftproject, Vanitas, and White Stag Review.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First published as New Directions Paperbook 1342 in 2016
eISBN 9780811225557
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
The Laughter of the Sphinx Page 4
