White Piano (3 page)

on Lido beach
water entered the mouth
burst of pure-blooded Lippizaners.
Then at a gallop you bolted to brush against time
in your chest, and joy.
You keep your tongue young.

a wall of images had to be confronted
women half-buried soon stoned
women nose cut off immense hole of darkness
Emma wavers camera in her grasp
from wordless suffering to the photo
from the photo to those minutiae of story
where you can never again make peace

now she tied her scarf of winter and of darkness
the words went off every which way
why am I so burdened
by shadow and by humanity
disculpe
repertory of fine needles stuck to immensity

prose, she thought, form dressed in sorrow

/ I didn’t write the story, you know. It was to start in Montréal, across from Parc Lafontaine, with a woman looking out a hotel window. She’s awaiting a manuscript she’s contracted to translate in the next six months without knowing the author’s name, sex or age. And maybe without even knowing what her mother tongue was, language of childhood and of babbling, of fever, laughter and cries sealed in the invisible. The contract says a manuscript of one hundred pages written by O. R.

I’d been promised the story, I was waiting for it. In the distance I could make out my fear. I kept the woman moving, as I do now, watching her walk in a Montréal crowd thirsty for jazz. She strolls down Jeanne Mance Street between the water fountains and the avalanche of sounds entwined in thoughts and the ­pianos of Satie, Honegger and Malipiero of Venice. Later, at nightfall, under fetish light of
lipstick
rouge, when we can make out shoulders and fragile napes, she’ll reappear with her intelligent face and questions for the entire planet.

I’d been promised a story, it awaited me. Everywhere prose settled into my notebooks, into thoughts, it positioned its people, wove connections, knotted plots in my bed just before I fell asleep. It seemed able to soothe and give pleasure. I liked its seeming transparency, which compelled me to think with that little bit of cunning and stillness needed to mollify the winged silhouette of death. Then one morning, poetry resurfaced, adapting for a while to the prose that enveloped pretty much every detail in my head. Stories leaking the way water leaks, seeping into the presence or slightest burst of poetry.

Time passed. The grammar of the everyday won’t let go. From now on, the poem absorbs the dust of prose and the very special ardour akin to the need to think in the flow of time /

‘Around 1900, the world was as full of pianos as it is full of cars today. The ­market was saturated; people bought an instrument simply because the piano next door had become intolerable and they preferred to produce their own noise.’

I tell you life is only good for living
it takes dialogues, that’s all
quivering swearing I tell you
I’m scarcely twenty years old scarcely
a pronoun in my solitude
from before all the wars

subterfuge of plural
having all of you in my head
creates a strange distance
like a number that could carve
a tactile sensation into the alphabet
of repeatedly the same voice

you
does not really distance
attracts sometimes if we extend both arms
palms poised to plunge deep
into the imagination and thorax

you rapid worn down while traversing
a century a catastrophe
gibbon teeth in the night
orality of pink dust and subtitles
oh| my living proofs

you know I caressed all that’s needed
of life and sumptuous beasts
but spread your wings once again
and your shells of ego, all of you, take wing
right to fine thirst and breath ribbon

be here be this
nocturnal figures plummeting
between centuries and works
know how to slow down
or figure out how
the inside of someone can shift
to reign freely in the form of petals
another day streaming
phrases dawn-fresh without error

without story, don’t touch the ashes

            1
on a pebble the light
does it keep pain at bay
forever
the threat of clenched fists
the obsession of tomorrow

           
2
knots of habit
we were saying speed
invisible tears
or the dust has ribbons

            3
without story we repeat
ankles, my head burns
epidemic,
we can only repeat my mother
breast or I, without story we need
the present, the light

            4
without story no spilt wine
nor conversation nor caress that swims
and rosy contour around the fingers
nor photo of you who wanted
naked, brief and full of oxygen

           
5
without story fear rises
together
crumbles fast
between the migrations
wild bursts of look-at-me
without story carpet of opacity out to infinity

           
6
without story heat of noon or face
the abyss wells up everywhere
it’s too fast the last breath

            7
without story who’ll still want to lick
the vague matter at the origin of thoughts
the terror harpooning the body from the waist down,

            8
without story continents dwindle
leaving only our lives slow to become lives
without pili-pili to reverse the pain
in the darkness of savoir-vie

stubborn backbone
that chafes the depth of thoughts

in the plupresent of fear and ecstasy
in the simple present of our intelligent tissues

anon
a landscape that rises like an ancient beast
flexible from throat to sex capable of flight and sudden
plunges of inebriate blue

the present wants the present up to the ears
then pain marks who is present; in the distance, cicadas
phrases unfurled 2ice without infinitive

at the time of the best sketches of solitude

versatile migrant pauses

to talk no more of coffins and repetition
laments language or quick the eyes above all
to displace the wind, the chic distresses. No one dares
laugh at themselves now because of fragile pronouns
with all our being we head toward elsewhere
to dip the alphabet in new mysteries
simple certainty of shadow
forever in the breast we carry a species overwhelmed
the pain of sincere wishes exchanged in chaos

so we clean the keyboard with our fingers
we disperse slowly solo
each crevice each key certain evenings
to speak in prose to speak dissipates the drownings of origin,

you’ve seen there are rhinestones
breezes too I was saying who
camouflages what

everyone wanted to enter consciousness
to meddle in the tiniest atoms of frenzy
on the brink of death everyone rolled their anguish
auto marble dice voice the same voice in a loop
to the end of love

            *

here I started to think again of Venice,
of ordinary scenes from Tiepolo, life of clay

piano and wise songs of water
amid touch screens where
question of instinct

we had to mix tastes,
languages, silks linen
tissue of intrigues
in the evening dig into the universe

cascade of ubiquity
no accumulation
a single longevity

maybe we’re true, maybe on the contrary we’re tomorrow
how to know if what comes
arises from deep in the throat from a double carnivore tumult
from a supple wrenching into the energy of the cosmos
maybe we’re true. The pain is still whole

            *

nervous depth of sensations
from the anecdote to the others, time flays

we live in the flow of time, don’t we
all these sofas sheets and beds where bodies are laid

let the fires rage, breathlessness revolt  

The universe is transparent toward the future

– Hubert Reeves,
Atoms of Silence

the power of questions
if you sit at the piano
amid whirlwinds designed
to make us vanish

what on earth was I thinking
to touch like this
the continuous murmur of lives compared
our centre of gravity feverish
the carmine powders of sudden wind

back then, we did not understand
today we know
one sex every month, a sex
hidden in the versatile pink that swallows
the time of petals

don’t be afraid
tomorrow won’t drown tomorrow
or 2narratives gallop between the pupils
the present erodes memory
the very speed of absence

knowledge shifted swallowing origin
vocabulary and night
each swan
our rose endurance through the centuries

I also noticed that we’d added
to the heart and the everyday
minor lacerations that mark
without embrace or snares
so I entered another era
with skulls and all that in the grass
because au revoir we loved
nature and to lie down there

I let go repeating
with a body a soul and another verb.

I’m broken: rivers music and seaways.
I tow a dawn of eviscerated language
stuck to the great crushed totality of history.

I let go dying

in the distance memory emp/tied
of sea and wind by screens
I walk absorbed by the augmented reality
in all the angles of
singularity

we’ll soon find out if
all that happens is necessary
the depths of love that stream
other depths made for survival

thoughts cries and antiquity
in a single gulp of the present
embroiled in exquisite night
we’ll soon find out if other
retorts if the others
will mount in mirrors
old goodbyes discharged
between characters, trompe-
l’œil
joy of illusion

we’ll soon find out if the iris if it will all fly
right to Vicenza

Shade of the Ephemeral Without Familiarity

all this energy
mass of silence
obstinately feverish

almost
, our death often
revives language
recomposes
without distance and without avowal
our nature

Streaming (continued)

between roots and ravines
sadness has tenderness
freefall of the living self
from under the void

we’ll soon find out if the pain
if silence if fervour at the turning point
if the trampling the upper calves
if a ‘tremulous ladder of tears’
^*
streams beyond naming

I let go dying
perfection change

following in my wake: water fountains glaciers
muqarnas under the celestial vault
pink hip of the muquères
friendship, my heart awash
duende
also those rare dangers that enthrall
in a single navigation

I let go dying
what will we bring into existence
that’s stark naked beyond breathing

several
longtime
heat of your skin, aorta
waiting
in time ready to pounce

done dying language embroiled in the bones
clouds of small aches that trap in mid-flight
space vaulted in its angles of purity

Streaming

the volcano, will we talk again
of nanomarbles of glass
of their invisible slowness abysmal until they reach us
will we talk again of all the metals we brush against
in the name of music and perfection