LINES ON THE POINT OF DISAPPEARING
‘The only possible representation of panic is velocity’
– Mario Merz
Instructions: to think.
•
To read that which is not written.
•
Concentration visible:
an igloo the ideal form.
•
How twisted and strange our toddler’s sentences
as she struggles to say what she means. I’m bored
by continual reference to language and meaning.
•
Words always lead to others,
notes refer to other books:
endless signposts pointing
everywhere and nowhere,
open maps for the intrigued.
•
Buildings, streets, cars and parking lot;
bundles of twigs, roots and flower.
Miracle of order and articulation
dropped in as a kind of shorthand.
The igloo developed from secret knowledge
that came suddenly on a long winter Sunday.
I desired to make art that shone like the outback,
to come up with a metaphor never used before.
•
How can I attend to so little for so long?
I fetch tradition and carry it with me.
Meanwhile, sentences glimmer over igloos
built in the counter-tradition of landscape.
At the same time all the world I know
hails my initiative, toasts my success.
The stones and the lead are necessary;
space is important, this space is fluid.
It is necessary to look at the complexity of life;
a steep metal staircase winds round the outside.
Grace is that mix of fullness and lightness,
those privileged moments of existence –
moments of writing, circumstance or love.
•
If there were red concrete I would build a red igloo.
As it is, I have slate, stone and mud, withies, and steel,
have canvas and wax, lead and sheet glass,
light to caulk joints between outside and in.
Dark associations and mythical allusions
are embedded in detailed manipulations
of impulse and import. I have the impression
that I have invented an art form which breathes,
that is restless, knowledgeable, savage
and spiritual. It has severe health problems
and a library of books I’m never tired of,
although I wish we had more shelves.
Where has the weather gone? May as well ask
about higher meaning or bringing the reader
closer to the lyric voice of the poet. It is only
hours away from the North Pole by plane.
Instructions: Make an enormous effort.
Say no to the theatricality of a situation.
Don’t shut the door, you’ll let the air in.
Try to be led astray. You may think I am
teaching my grandma to suck eggs. I’m not.
•
What one reads on one’s own notebook page
is the slime trail left by time, a snail spiral
through culture, highlighting narrative and
attempting to reduce it to manageable size.
There is a compulsion to sacrifice everything
or frame it on the wall. The movement of
animals is defined by rules of growth, their
simple desire to feed and inhabit the earth.
We can clip stone to the spine and neon
to the frame, but the ensuing tension
between moved and unmoved, spectator
and maker will not bring about a solution.
Please note the after image, the faint
stain of the my-oh-my-is-that-what-we-did-
in-those-days? upon memory’s headline.
Order is always waiting in the future to
meet us: out come all the imaginary tigers.
In verse one I tried to point to a problem
that cannot be resolved. All of us have had
the experience of trying to do nothing –
stop busyness and vacuity pours through,
red sap rising as far as the branches.
This is not enemy propaganda, it is the
culmination of glacier’s lifelong drift.
The melting ice threatens to be every
moment, a wound that will not heal.
We have not done any work at all,
have simply thought about how
our lives could be. But here come
the grey weeks of work to weigh us down
before we find translucence and inertia.
Now in our village with the falling light,
neatly-carved blocks of ice surround us
where we have built our igloo homes.
Wave 3.5c
After Oulipo
November, 2010
Poems
Lines on the Point of Disappearing
The Me and the here and the Now
Rupert Loydell
Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, and the editor of Stride and With magazines. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including the recent Boombox from Shearsman, and A Music Box of Snakes, co-authored with Peter Gillies, from Knives, Forks & Spoons Press. He edited From Hepworth's Garden Out: poems about painters and St. Ives for Shearsman, and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh, an anthology of manifestos and unmanifestos, for Salt. He lives in a creekside village with his family and far too many CDs and books.