Is this what you intended, Vincent
that we take our rest at the end of the grove
nestled into our portion beneath the bird’s migration
saying, who and how am I made better through struggle.
Or why am I I inside this empty arboretum
this inward spiral of whoop ass and vision
the leafy vine twisting and choking the tree.
O, dear heaven, if you are indeed that
or if you can indeed hear what I might say
heal me and grant me laughter’s bounty
of eyes and smiles, of eyes and affection.
To not be naive and think of silly answers only
not to imagine answers would be the only destination
nor is questioning color even useful now
now that the white ray in the distant tree beacons.
That the sun can do this to us, every one of us
that the sun can do this to everything inside
the broken light refracted through leaves.
What the ancients called peace, no clearer example
what our fathers called the good, what better celebration.
Leaves shine in the body and in the head alike
the sun touches deeper than thought.

O to be useful, of use, to the actual seen thing
to be in some way related by one’s actions in the world.
There might be nothing greater than this
nothing truer to the good feelings that vibrate within
like in the middle of the flower I call your name.
To correspond, to be in equanimity with organic stuff
to toil and to reflect and to home and to paint
father, and further, the migration of things.
The homing action of geese and wood mice.
The ample evidence of the sun inside all life
inside all life seen and felt and all the atomic pieces too.

But felt things exist in shadow, let us reflect.
The darkness bears a shine as yet unpunished by clarity
but perhaps a depth that outshines clarity and is true.
The dark is close to doubt and therefore close to the sun
at least what the old books called science or bowed down to.
The dark is not evil for it has indigo and cobalt inside
and let us never forget indigo and the warmth of that
the warmth of the mind reflected in a dark time
in the time of pictures and refracted light.
Ah, the sun is here too in the polar region of night
the animal proximity of another and of nigh.

To step into it as into a large surf in late August
to go out underneath it all above and sparkling.
To wonder and to dream and to look up at it
wondrous and strange companion to all our days
and the toil and worry and animal fear always with us.
The night sky, the deep sense of space, actual bodies of light
the gemstone brushstrokes in rays and shimmers
to be held tight, wound tighter in the act of seeing.
The sheer vertical act of feeling caught up in it
the sky, the moon, the many heavenly forms
these starry nights alone and connected alive at the edge.

Now to think of the silver and the almost blue in pewter.
To feel these hues down deep, feel color wax and wane
and yellow, yellows are the tonality of work and bread.
The deep abiding sun touching down and making its impression
making so much more of itself here than where it signals
the great burning orb installed at the center of each and every thing.
Isn’t it comforting this notion of each and every thing
thought nothing might be the final and actual expression of it
that nothing at the center of something alive and burning
green then mint, blue then shale, gray and gray into violet
into luminous dusk into dust then scattered now gone.

But what is the use now of this narrow ray, this door ajar
the narrow path canopied in dense wood calling
what of the striated purposelessness in lapidary shading and line.
To move on, to push forward, to take the next step, to die.
The circles grow large and ripple in the hatch-marked forever
the circle on the horizon rolling over and over into paint
into the not near, the now far, the distant long-off line of daylight.
That light was my enemy and one great source of agony
one great solace in paint and brotherhood the sky and grass.
The fragrant hills spoke in flowering tones I could hear
the gnarled cut stumps tearing the sky, eating the sun.

The gnarled cut stumps tearing the sky, eating the sun
the fragrant hills spoke in flowering tones I could hear
one great solace in paint and brotherhood the sky and grass.
That light was my enemy and one great source of agony
into the not near, the now far, the distant long-off line of daylight
the circle on the horizon rolling over and over into paint.
The circles grow large and ripple in the hatch-marked forever.
To move on, to push forward, to take the next step, to die.
What of the striated purposelessness in lapidary shading and line
the narrow path canopied in dense wood calling
but what is the use now of this narrow ray, this door ajar.

Into luminous dusk into dust then scattered now gone
green then mint, blue then shale, gray and gray into violet
that nothing at the center of something alive and burning
through nothing might be the final and actual expression of it.
Isn’t it comforting this notion of each and every thing
the great burning orb installed at the center of each and every thing
making so much more of itself here than where it signals.
The deep abiding sun touching down and making its impression
and yellow, yellows are the tonality of work and bread.
To feel these hues down deep, feel color wax and wane
now to think of the silver and the almost blue in pewter.

These starry nights alone and connected alive at the edge
the sky, the moon, the many heavenly forms
the sheer vertical act of feeling caught up in it.
To be held tight, wound tighter in the act of seeing
the gemstone brushstrokes in rays and shimmers.
The night sky, the deep sense of space, actual bodies of light
and the toil and worry and animal fear always with us
wondrous and strange companion to all our days.
To wonder and to dream and to look up at it
to go out underneath it all above and sparkling
to step into it as into a large surf in late August.

The animal proximity of another and of nigh.
Ah, the sun is here too in the polar region of night
in the time of pictures and refracted light
the warmth of the mind reflected in a dark time
and let us never forget indigo and the warmth of that.
The dark is not evil for it has indigo and cobalt inside
at least what the old books called science or bowed down to.
The dark is close to doubt and therefore close to the sun
but perhaps a depth that outshines clarity and is true.
The darkness bears a shine as yet unpunished by clarity
but felt things exist in shadow, let us reflect.

Inside all life seen and felt and all the atomic pieces too
the ample evidence of the sun inside all life
the homing action of geese and wood mice
father, and furhter, the migration of things.
To toil and to reflect and to home and to paint
to correspond, to be in equanimity with organic stuff
like in the middle of the flower I call your name.
Nothing truer to the good feelings that vibrate within
there might be nothing greater than this
to be in some way related by one’s actions in the world.
O to be useful, of use, to the actual seen thing.

The sun touches deeper than thought
leaves shine in the body and in the head alike
what our fathers called the good, what better celebration.
What the ancients called peace, no clearer example
the broken light refracted through leaves.
That the sun can do this to everything inside
that the sun can do this to us, every one of us
now that the white ray in the distant tree beacons.
Nor is questioning color even useful now
nor to imagine answers would be the only destination
to not be naive and think of silly answers only.

Of eyes and smiles, of eyes and affection
heal me and grant me laughter’s bounty.
Or if you can indeed hear what I might say
O, dear heaven, if you are indeed that
the leafy vine twisting and choking the tree
this inward spiral of whoop ass and vision.
Or why am I I inside this empty arboretum
saying, who and how am I made better through struggle
nestled into our portion beneath the bird’s migration
that we take our rest at the end of the grove
is this what you intended, Vincent.

Peter Gizzi, “Vincent, Homesick for the Land of Pictures,” in The Outernationale (Wesleyan University Press, 2007)

*
Note:  On February 27th, 2013, Peter Gizzi was in McCosh Hall to read and discuss his recent work with students and faculty at the invitation of the Contemporary Poetry Colloquium.

Richard Diebenkorn, Girl in White Blouse, 1962

From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine

By Rosanna Warren

I.

When his dogs leapt on Actaeon, he

cried (did he cry out?)—He flung

his arm to command, they tore his hand

from the wrist stump, tore

guts from his belly through the tunic, ripped

the cry from his throat.

That’s how we know a god, when the facts

leap at the tenderest innards, and we know

the god is what we can’t change. You

stood over me as I woke, I opened my eyes, I saw

that I’d seen and that it was too

late: the seeing

of you in the doorway with weak electric light

fanning behind you in the hall, and my room and narrow pallet steeped in shadow

were what I couldn’t change, and distantly

I wanted you, and, as distantly,

I heard the dogs, baying.

II.

And yet the fountain spends itself, and it is

in the clear

light of its losing that we seem

to take delight:

you dipped your hand in its running braid

to sprinkle my forehead, my lips.

Garden deities observed us: three nymphs

with moss staining their haunches, a pug-nosed faun.

The wound in water closed

perfectly around your gesture, erasing it,

so that only the glimmer, swiftly

drying, on my face recalled

our interruption

of the faultless, cold, passionate, perpetual

idea of the stream’s descent—

which, unlike ours, would always be renewed.

III.

I kissed a flame, what did I expect.

Those days, you painted in fire. Tangerine, gold:

one would have had to be a pilgrim to walk

through that wall of molten glass.

And purification

could be conceived, if not

attained, only after many years,

in autumn, in a fire greater than yours,

though menstrual blood still tinged the threshold

and our ex-votos were sordid—scraps of blistered flesh

taped to kitsch prayer cards—and neither of us knew

the object of this exercise, except

having, inadvertently, each of us, burned

we recognized the smell

of wood smoke, the slow swirl

flakes of wood ash make in heavy air;

and we were ready, each in a private way, to make

the gifts the season required.

Mine was the scene

of my young self in your arms,

eyes in your eyes, clutched in the effort

to give each other away—when I glimpsed

behind your pleasure, fear; behind

fear, anger; and knew

in a bolt some gifts

conceal a greater gift.

I have kept it. Now I am ready to give it back

into darker flame

in this season of goldenrod, the ardent weed,

and Queen Anne’s lace in its mantilla of ash.

And yet, how lumpishly, how stupidly I stand.

How much that is human will never burn.

IV.

And if you should answer?

I listened, years before I knew you, to the whine

of wind through the high stony pastures above my childhood village;

I breathed lavender and thyme and burned my bare legs

on nettles, scraped them on thistles, and rubbed

the sore skin till it reddened all the more. When we

walked the uplands together, you burned your hand

and I kissed the crimsoning nettle-rash. “We are the Lords of need,”

you said Hafiz said,

and I believed you, and we were.

In the rugs of your country, carmine is crushed

from insects, cochineal; saffron gold

is boiled from crocus stamens; and indigo

of heaven and fountain pools is soaked, hours upon hours,

from indigo leaves. “Like the angel Harut,”

you said, “We are in the calamity of love-desire.”

The angel is chained by neck and knees, head down, in the pit of Babel

for falling in love. Your carpets

told a different story: scarlet and saffron

blush as in Paradise, and God reveals himself

in wine, flame, tulips, and the light in a mortal eye.

All night you held me, sleepless, on my childhood cot in the stone house;

all night the wind seethed through crags and twisted olive trees,

high on the scents of thyme and goat droppings. “All night,”

Hafiz sang, “I hope the breeze of dawn will cherish the lovers.”

But the breeze of dawn is the angel of death.

You are in your far landscape now, I am in mine:

the wind complains and I can’t understand the words.

And if you should answer?

You, ten years away, in a different wind.

“We are in the calamity,” Hafiz sang. “But tell the tale

of the minstrel and of wine, and leave time alone. Time

is a mystery no skill will solve.” We should

thread words like pearls, you said, and the grateful sky

would scatter the Pleiades upon us

though we couldn’t see, and that was long ago.

V.

The carpet is not a story. It is a place,

garden of crisscrossed pathways, labyrinth,

fountain, pool, and stream.

As though the fabric had ripped at the vanishing point

at the top of the street

of ashen façades and slate-sloped roofs, you stepped

through the gap, out of your own world.

I had already lost my world.

We met in a torn design

which we tore further, pulling the tall warp,

thread wrapped tightly around our fingers until it bit the flesh

and the rue de Lille unravelled.

I know about design: it’s my job,

arranging other people’s letters in star charts

that phosphoresce in the dark between the closed covers of books.

You knew about design from the holes

blown through your country.

We spoke in a language of no country on earth.

You moved slowly, in shadow, teaching the shadows

to echo my name. You ripped my shirt at the neck.

Was it The Beloved I held, holding you?

Down the middle of the carpet the river

weaves a thousand gray glimmers into the deeper green.

The river knows about mourning; that’s its job.

How many years has it practiced? With such fleet fingers. A man

woke me at dawn this morning, sobbing and cursing in the street,

reeling from sidewalk to gutter and back again.

On my long gray street, the rue de Lille, where I still live.

NOTES: Anne Verveine is an imaginary French poet. She was born in 1965 in the village of Magagnosc in the Alpes Maritimes, and attended the lycée in Grasse. She never studied at a university. She lived obscurely in Paris, avoiding literary society and working as a typographer and designer for a small publisher of art books. She published a few poems in provincial journals, but no book of her own work. She was last seen hitchhiking in Uzbekistan in August 2000; is presumed kidnapped or dead. Anne Verveine’s sister found these poems in notebooks in the poet’s small apartment in Paris after her disappearance.

I translate them.

“From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine” from Departure,

W. W. Norton & Co., 2003

______

On September 25th, 2012, at 4:30pm Rosanna Warren, Bain-Swiggett Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor of Poetry, will be reading and discussing her work in McCosh 40 as part of the Princeton Contemporary Poetry Colloquium‘s guest speaker series.