#839 - five little poems for Angela Costi

 

22.iv.22

839

3.112

five little poems for Angela Costi

(from marginal notes)

after reading An Embroidery of Old Maps and New 

                and with careful English

she helps me to remember who I am 

the whole catastrophe

 

we carry all of the dead on our backs

 

what a weight!

and they love to press down

 

it’s their ignorance

their clear all seeing

 

they have baggage too

 

dashed dreams, the old mortgages

hates, jealousies yet to play out

 

pending worlds of meant to do

it’s funny what’s there to remember

when gone

 

nor ever sure where they want to go

so many missed turnings

 

which season it will be?

 

it is a fortunate thing indeed

they have lent to us the jumbo wings

 

we thought that they would be giants

but it’s they peer over our shoulders

 

dizzy with daylight

sneezing at the sun

it’s tomb dust they’ve got used to

 

and what’s that now, you hold in your hands?

 

‘count no man fortunate until…’

 

they can know nothing of our woes

these times

 

they are our very own

 

 

 

 

the skin awake at an early hour

 

in the minor succession of self

 

hemfails

 

I love the all away

the far

like light years

and in other words

in windows as for

 

when stone was a pillow

and this Earth my egg

 

if we ride on a tram or a train or a bus

they are with us

to make sure

 

the ghosts at our garbage my father wrote

 

then I could squeeze out how

 

every animal was dream first

we are no exception

 

in a hills hoist you can catch the stars

and wing them rusting for a wish

 

do all socks go into the garden at last?

no, some make asteroids

 

fall to Earth

on every working day

 

the cruel English with their awful language

where we now all live

 

where

make a church

of melted wax

then these are tears of light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a daily meditation

wheels come off

 

to be dust again

soil humid

 

feed the nameless

trickle down

far as late as stone

and thus beyond imagination

 

it’s day by day

and step by step

all of this is earned

 

 

 

 

I imagine

 

what it would have been

to have my grandparents meet

I imagine the four of them together

of course some of them were already familiar

happy never to see each other again

(they were the couples

but a swap might have worked)

 

I would translate for them

whatever might seem appropriate

all along pretending

that could have been

something I knew

 

 

 

 

under a mask

 

we thought of robbery

the open heart

clamp, suction

rubber snap of gloves

where every part is precious

look up, see

storms of brow