Post in praise of ice (did I just say that?) or an interval of time

Ice forms among the bulrushes (West Quoddy, NS)

I am forever startled by how quickly night falls as we approach December.  We are in full sunlight and then suddenly we are in darkness; the icy surface of the pond and the sea hold the light a little longer, but then they too must give it up. First the land goes dark, and then the islands; finally the water joins them, an inky pool, noisesome in the darkness.

I sit by the fire with the cat. She has taken up her odalisque pose on the bench beside me, both of us craving the warmth, letting it radiate into our bones. A high of zero degrees today; when Marike and I stepped into the light for a walk, it felt as if the north wind was squeezing my face, pinching my cheeks, thumping my forehead. It took several minutes to get used to it, to stop feeling as if I ought to turn around and huddle indoors. Underfoot, the crackle and shatter of puddles become brittle ice--all of the water of the last days' soakings transformed into glittering patterns in the ditches.

We finally remembered to shut the windows in the bedroom and the bath--I had to climb on the garage roof and then the oil tank and push while Marike ground the windows inward and locked them down; they are secured now for the winter. We dumped three buckets of ashes over the wall, and hung out and then brought in an icy load of laundry. In the interim, we walked around the headland, down to the water, then back again.

Today the chickadees were puffed up and greedy for seeds--one bird, the smallest one, sat repeatedly in my palm and crammed as many sunflower seeds as it could into its beak, perhaps four or five, before flying away to cache them in the trees. We startled a grouse or two, and one or two rabbits, their fawn colouring giving way to snow now--just this week white patches have begun to spread across their noses and up the backs of their legs.

Once I was out in the sun, despite the cold, I didn't want to come in. It was high tide when we set out, the beach underwater, so we picked our way along mossy deer paths in the forest to get from one cove to the next. Once in the lee of the wind, we stopped to sit with the sun on our faces, eyes closed, listening to the suck and drift of the water, to the almost silent fanning of the weeds at our feet.

Just here, like this, I said to Marike, and you can imagine that life on earth is truly good.

Voces paginarum/ Shouting words

Voces paginarum*

The words speak

to me

they leap

up and dance and

then

so do I.

SIT DOWN!

the teacher says.

READ SILENTLY:

DON’T MOVE YOUR LIPS.

READ TO YOURSELF.

(Shouting words,

but

Not for us

a loud clamour and

exclamation

no declamation

no exultation

nor excessive

incantation vocal

ornamentation

no

voices in the head

no

voices not your
own may pass

your

            lips

no

)

KEEP your voice DOWN

(a lady does not shout nor

a gentleman)

(then why when I look

do I see so many

shouting?)

We are not like them those others

who tooth and taste their words

or yours

KEEP your WORDS in your mouth.

KEEP them scrubbed.

Don’t meddle or mix

promiscuously

with other idioms

(lenguas, langues, zungas)

KEEP YOUR TONGUE IN

YOUR MOUTH

lest those others

(les infectes)       you

Stray not with

strange sounds and scents or

savours

Neither dance nor sing nor

poietes be;

don’t

heap up your words:

cinoti,

(I dare you

read that word

quickly

aloud)

in Sanskrit or

any other spraak of

taal

(LEAVE SOME SPACE

lest

MARK MY WORDS

YOU)

not without a little red*

can

never get

clene

again.

Notes on words

*voces paginarum (Latin: voices of the page, or reading (calling out) as it was practiced, for example, in the early middle ages in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  For Augustine, for example, a text was meant to be followed with the lips, as much as with the eyes. In reading (from Middle English reden and Old High German rattan, to advise), one literally delivers or gives voice to and performs the assemblies noted in the text.  Or as Tim Ingold puts it, “the poetic text is…at once script and score” (Lines, 12).  But today, in school, we are taught that reading thus is bad form; unless we are performing or reading aloud to others to whisper or mouth the words we sight when we “read to ourselves” isn’t done.  The contemporary rule is clear: “read with your eyes, not your mouth”; shut up those words inside yourself, don’t mix insides and outsides; don’t get confused.

Lengua (Spanish: tongue, language)

Langue (French: tongue, language)

Zumba (Old High German: tongue)

Les infectes (French: infected persons; detritus; those who don’t count)

Cinoti from the Sanskrit, meaning to heap up; thought to be related to the Greek verb. poiein, to make, produce or create (poetry and other works of art). 

Poietes (Ancient Greek: poet, maker, creator)

spraak of taal (Dutch: speech (tongue) or tongue (speech))

* “not without a little red” Artaud, writing of the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, argues that poiesis does not happen without “a little red blood.”  Here he is making a playful—poetic—link between the expediture of a life lived for poetry and a blood price—poine in ancient Greek, poena in Latin.  The difference one letter makes is at once nothing and everything.

Clene is middle English for what is free from dirt or pollution (but the word clean, in English ultimately comes to us from the Old High German kleini, delicate, dainty, which is thought to be derived from the Greek glainoi, ornaments. Clean is thus never quite properly purged of elements not itself, never unadulterated; never pure.)

Notes on photographs

I took these photos of intertidal creatures in August 2012 on Hakai Beach, on the west coast of Calvert Island, in Central British Columbia.  

The purple and orange starfish are variants of the species Piaster ochraceus, a keystone species on the northwest coast of the Americas.  Predators of common mussels, they prevent overgrowth in mussel beds, and thus help to maintain species diversification on northwest Pacific shores.  

The green tubes are a species of anenome known as aggregating or clonal anenomes.  These creatures may reproduce sexually (two gametes fuse in the water and then settle on a rock) or asexually, by fission, which permits the anenomes to form vast clonal carpets consisting of a single genetic variant that lives as a colony, and is hostile to other colonies. The green colour of these anenomes is supplied by symbiotic algae that live within the cells of the host animal, and contribute to the primary productivity of the intertidal zone. The lessons of such visually noisy interdependence shouldn't be lost on us.

Not Yet

We call Night the privation of relish in the appetite for all things.

 John of the Cross, quoted by Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux

She dreams of a soft boiled egg.

The inaudible tear the yellow flood the 

pouring tender not quite flesh on

crusty bread. The tang of cheese. Of

sourdough. Sharp scent of torn basil leaf. Creamy avocado

plucked from the tree that shatters its fruit

on the kitchen window.

Every possibility is in front of us then.

Every--

Thousands of days 
filled with sunshine. And the rushing 
sea.

And the wind, cool 
on the nape of the neck.

Strong coffee in the afternoon.

A girl in striped pants.  The sensation

of sand 

between 
your toes.

How can it be afternoon?

So soon blue 
.

She picks up her scarf.

Wait. 

Don't go.

Not yet.

(This can't go on. 
 This--)

Not yet.

They sit on a grassy hill by the side of the road.

Cliffs tumble to the sea.

She pulls a bottle from the hamper, 

breaks the crust of bread with her hands, her 
red lips black, the 
fading light.

Cool wind on the nape
of her neck.

She gathers her scarf.

(No. Who twisted 
you;

who

so that) I'll be leaving now

(who twists)

her posture

(someone is 
going

away)

Oh please, 
linger.

A thousand afternoons of light five

thousand ten:

twenty-eight years of days of

sand between your toes 

of cobble beaches and

(sucking sounds)  

rocks 
they tumble 

(what we call night

what we call)

endless oncoming 

(relish
what we call)

waves 

Here is my scallop bed,

here is my island.

Come

dive with me.

We paddle to the island; we 
stand in shallow water; we pluck

scallops, sucking out

flesh

(the inaudible tear the sudden 
flood the

pouring) 

salt bathes 
her tongue,

the afternoon shimmers
glimmers, tumbles--

oh,

the failing

light. 

Wait.

Don't (who has

who has
twisted
you around like

who has
)

Don't. Not yet. Not

(who

so that in part-

ing

)

While there is still 

light (while those,  
le

stelle) while those

stars still shine

still (lucevan

)

into 

night

She 

shines (seashells) she turns
(on the seashore) she 
stops (seashells) she 
lingers

she (seashells)

winds her scarf

she sings

(le 

stelle) in
her sleep

Notes
Quotations are distortions of phrases from:
St. John of the Cross via Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux
Rilke's Eighth Duino Elegy, trans. Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, (New York: Vintage: 1984), 197 and
 Puccini, E lucevan le stelle, sung by Beniamino Gigli, 1938


Photos are from this album: "Taylor Head Barachois," http://www.flickr.com/photos/karincope/sets/72157629294954786/


This poem was my response to an exercise I set my Strategic Fictions class.  We read--and looked at--various love stories as models for our own writing.  I asked them to think about the following questions:


Why, when we think of love and writing, do we so often think of poetry?  Is it because poetry is a kind of writing where not simply each word, but each beat, each syllable, each space and line break count?  Poetry (and love) both call for precision it seems—and sometimes, though not always, an economy of gesture.  But perhaps we think of poetry and love together too, because what we wish of each is a delightful surprise of the ear.  And what do we reap? Often, too often, dissonance, boredom, waiting, rhythms utterly out of step…We also tend to repeat clichés, and others’ words, over and over. Is there a way, nevertheless, to make such suspensions, such repetitions, work?


I do not know if I have succeeded. But as I tell my students, what is most important is to try.

Abundance in a dry land

Flowers bloom in a crevasse, La Ramada, Baja California Sur