14. In the Landscape of Language

to shut down at last

– this sticky pleasure grown around –

“we never sinned in language”

oh no, what

is happening here

& where are

the poets when

you really need ‘em

then?

the light is soft

soft & clear

this evening

  blanched sun

  stirred thru milky cloud

  a faint burnished stain

  flavours the west

we have run out of pronouns

                            – now

Allora, perche questa poem attraversa qui?

– non lo so – non faccio agente di viaggio, ma poeta soltando

ah, but that beef was good

then we slept in the heat

while the berries in the hedgerow slowly ripened

                                  red as warning

“what I said to myself is that I would write a poem which was to its language what a person is to its landscape”

Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry (U California P, 2000), p 203

just

    assume it’s true

    & then sometimes

    it is

this bloody language

squishy as soggy pie

stains

       everything

these riots in the mist of where we are

free us from the constraints of who we are