it must be noisy yet not alarming
Those who hear it across the valley
in their ears closed with honey
will feel the sting of bells
in the palace only one vase need splinter
from his arms only the virgin need struggle
the boy knows now to kiss
he will ride horses to the blue dome.
Twenty-four veils in a pile
and hatchoutchoui houri
for hours and hours and hours
the patient needy camel lifts his neck
over the sun brick petals catch
that is all … no vines … no miles
… no hills … no caves in the hills …
women walk to the fountain
Pasha is with the Consul
the French woman writes letters a violet eye
toward the boy who has peed on the tile
she forgets the name for raisin says plum
Milk say the heavens regarding the white sand
Bosphorus click of eel in your wave off Egypt
tow-ridden plain of Kilid Bahr
trees and risk where ancient bouncing flat
is war land of the tomb otherwise lids
Air in the arch is black
as sighs from vessels cast
on the shut-off tide.
The Brown Studio
Walking into the room
after having spent a night in the grove
by the river
its duskiness surprised me.
The hours I had spent under foliage,
the forms I had seen were all sombre,
even the music was distinctly shady, the water
had left me melancholy, my hands I had rinsed
were muddy. I had seen only one bird with a bright
wing, the rest were starlings,
the brownness alarmed me.
I saw the black stove, the black chair,
the black coat. I saw the easel, remembering it as
an ordinary wood tone, rather pale, I realized
it was inky, as were the drawings.
Of course you weren’t there, but a photograph was.
Actually a negative. Your hair didn’t show up at all.
Where that fairness had lit the open ground,
now there was an emptiness, beginning to darken.
I believed if I spoke,
if a word came from my throat
and entered this room whose walls had been turned,
it would be the color of the cape
we saw in Aix in the studio of Cézanne,
it hung near the death’s head, the umbrella,
the palette cooled to grey,
if I spoke loudly enough,
knowing the arc from real to phantom,
the fall of my voice would be,
a dying brown.
All Elegies Are Black and White
To Robert Motherwell
When Villon went to his college
he wore a black gown
he put his hood up when
he went out on the black streets.
He ate black bread
and even drank a kind of black wine,
(we don’t have any longer)
it wasn’t that good Beaune
his skill taught him how to steal,
a disappearing drink also.
The sky was white over Paris,
until it fell in the streets,
like a sky over mountains,
disturbing and demanding.
When you are in Spain
you think of sky
and mountain where the forest
is without water.
You think of your art
which has become important
like a plow
on the flat land.
There are even a few animals
to consider.
And olives.
Do you regard them separately?
The forms of nature,
animals, trees
That bear a black burden
whose throat is always thirsty?
I know of Seville of black carriages
one factory
one river
the air is brown.
Alas we have fair hair, are rojo.
Throw a mantilla over your face
rojo of the light,
walk only in the white spaces.
The trains that cross back and forth
the borders of Elegy
sleep all afternoon, at night
lament the lost shapes.
I think when you oppose
black against white,
archaeologist you have raised a dream
which is bitter.
The white elegy
is the most secret elegy.
One may arrive at it
from the blue.
The sky in Spain is high.
It is as high as the sky
in California.
When one begins with white and blue
it is necessary for one’s eyes to darken.
One may have fair hair in Spain,
yet the trouble of blue eyes!
Unless one can always live
sparsely as in Castille.
(How wise you are to understand
the use of orange with blue.
“Never without the other.”)
And what courage to allow oneself
to become black and blue!
It is necessary that eyes be black
so