L'Abbaye de St. Jean

(THE ARGUMENT FROM THE DRANSE)   The Dranse is a river. Dranse is an old word in the Savoy language, sister to our word drench;  it means a torrent down the mountain, a torrent is a flood that the rocks control. Shaped by the rocks it shapes, a mountain torrent is the perfect reciprocal gesture, a word among things, fluent and responsive, carving out by passing by.  It is a fleeting gesture that changes eternities, a mark elapsing that leaves behind hard meanings where it passes.                                [The poem begins on Saturday, 7 August 2004, in La Borne.]       Not lost too much tooth the touch of tender  in the fine a fork among friends   O salt to love who after hamamelis lit the whistle hard on its going down   a gong for spraddle or butter a mother be care, keel, any anyboat you see   smell of kerosene making sense green a furber or a foal wagtail on 2 lawns     slow grade up cliff startling chough clouds limestone patter of sunshine organdy pear rock   pine lime chalk calvaire watch satellite sputum gel on monitor stickum explain to the pharmacist   don’t smoke lobelia not catering blue pipit oblige wooden guest palace union semaphore   means always carrying overanxious psyllium protractor’s narrative circular newspaper   what was said is neophyte it bleached pleadings of foreign capital embedded in domestic cleavage   alternate with druidry take to the sea scum sloshed ankles of a Thalassite prancer & the period   magnesium epopteia sly words for raree flash your popinjay theory buster your sorebones   one’s neck is long spirit history Oneida sharing their SUV a woman picks her nose   the mountains notice canít  fool them analysis particulate chemist waiting at hot crucible   Sumerian alphabet discovered this is it cloud on that land scattering wheat amazed bone white of pearl barley   account for matter quills release in enemy to ink or restless ceremonial pause   All the waits to small a get midlight on the balcony a pax   waits a pope hand signal on the high who do it with raised hands harrowing heaven every death   time to go to bread hill to have a horse cool now but the sun under Mont Evian —we  are named for what we see—   Say? That too imponderable konversatie chipping at the wall roughcast philosophy all the kind a diner on the moon a soviet uncertain about articles   a man the man man itself chelovek a preposterous guess this & not that or better butterfly bush all purple brushes diplomats assemble neckties and begin.   · The ostensorium has golden censers hands touch everything like flies alighting nothing past the blue of place to gold the somber mountain of what happens down which it is to come down cloud later   second coming! river running north cold in case a squadron of jackdaws measured against math resistance pure morality or puritan the lip of left never kissed the body’s folds   aching for political caress where does everybody live there canít be fields without streams stream without loosestrife cows bells down Mont Chéry the goats stampeded   dense manifesto a creed to need write in one paragraph what is believed to be the case or who dropped the sparrow in the first place and who the hero the thrush sings to what alphabet to write that name   drenched with particulars the rocket burst fireflowers over the limestone lake the folk hurry up the narrow road to be amazed sound & light as if no other where together only here across the clear green water rose   a touch to be as dense as history chance the prepositional rapture charlatans of sun disease rehearsing islands to goat farmers mountains are to lose in but what   Akkadian policy where it all went wrong language used to letter laws write down instead what never was and make it be Gospel of Bethany the afterlife of Madeleine-Marie     language goes wrong when it records annals should be pictures scratched in rock or a church built of common stones mysterious basketmakers weave history in but writing means for pure invention   (hard for puers to have puers) all comes to this new next a fleet of uncertainties arriving on the morning tide no water stands mountain pitcher pour Aquarius   no strange vocabulary apple red fish green shadow hill hill habit slipside after cunning rede-motes of old never a spill of milk a spunk of flame   eunoterus or scrabalost no not those radio all words are strange in a foreign country lose all subtlety that usually marks the delight of speaking now just coarse where is this and when and how   and otherwise the spirits of the flowers make the breeze that lifts the blue over quoting Wordspear and Lakesworth too often bramble bush here and a gorse over there where the sheep’s shadow climbs the hill     the herd corners after spiral path chronometer built in stone and guess the sun falters through the autumn gate to make born who would do own faltering later coin by coin until the green girl walked along the brick   which is the Greek for river where the girl recumbent yet advancing swoon by swoon enkindles amity among the moths our mothers every creature was in time or will be by virtue of that virtue held in heart wax   from the blond beehive achieve intoxicating liberal magazines copper shells to go to war with the priest and his cycle when the wind dies down and every straw relaxes pelargonium and lavender sun behind the hill   life is a valley it really wants to tell the whole story now thunder on the mountain rain spits a flower wet a pink one and nobody knows the crest of Mont Evian in sunshine still and elsewise nubibus   colles celentur or pick the flower and have done with it a pharmacist of little wounds and wonders – who lit the light? – no one but color is so color has to do the work of heroes     slumbering inside the wooden horse in Cernagora the plump girl in blonde wig is Helena o peruque of falsity a cock crows also just before dark like Hegel’s owl which had overflown these battlements   gold or no gold to tell the story whole but name no names – pure invention— maligned by whose inferiors temporary heartbreak and bus downhill until the soldiers see the lake and cry   armistice of motives is a kind despot a blue entitlement the theorist says but others plead the Justinian excuse one must rule the world to answer heaven or build a sky that answers to his name   nobody needier than neat the Greeks knew woodcarved language of the logothete polychromed by famous men to kill a bear or bring a Bulgar home all love is pain incessantly consented to the sand is wet   the blood of virgins saturates the books thought Commedia dell’arte practical vise a turngrip shaped like a crucifix lets the tyres change from wheel to wheel all love falters the same circle describe the street   fall to its knees and not for prayer but work between the virgin and the guava fruit whose lake is thick with tule reeds the wind chatters them together sticks on sticks on necks to wake all things then meditator from his dreams   +++   thunder but no rain hear her voice         thunderbird but see no face it all is mountain limestone religion two girls pétanque toss underhand the iron balls chop the jack away all the mystic gates are closed by music   +++     the incendiary difference like a goat calling to its mother on the hill a sprawl of udders down the cliff and some high houses oak castaways along the cloud road rapture is it or time to begin screwdriver hungry for the hard Christians here are dragons   here hard money drives a tan chalet up rock and the keen scatterers of destiny girl by girl pétanque in the church’s shadow Saint Guérin Pray For Us who smooth the stone in place with such amazing effort that nothing shows just a furry cat waiting on the wall   say nothing lest it turn to gold the baker’s wall so bryophyted and vascular green too the stolid amazements of what no one makes happen trip by submarine through the green rhizomes of the mind’s valley where naught is where it should be among the weltering artisans of local numbers   it is to live for other people that is all interrupted by it never rained the headlight explains the empty road too many particles to call it mist alone or angry molecules or barbara celarent where the teacher turns his back at last on all the words   and when the words are gone the god is gone Saint Antoine d’Egypte shown with a pig borrowed from another Anthony or lent to him which way does borrow go imprint a’s object on b’s use of it or other way in bells remind the empty church of all it’s lost   all the people who will never come again and kiss the pig or beg the saint’s protection against the usufruct of dream the hectic dreamlife of moral personages lost in stucco only in graffiti to recollect at last the icon that spreads wide the mountain of remember   be small with ceremony the old pews creak old jug for the spirit to take comfort in be housed in mutter ….. the worst take shape zygotes of influence and plasma of remorse till finally nothing final even speaks why should it sumac drupes as red here as in Algonquia     +++   make more fit in everything too loose make it tight and turbulent entablature of a temple to an absent god or just the priests are gone the god let loose is fire to roam glad among kayakers and a prayer for rain   turn free by road assemblymen of hell who caught this town before the avalanche and made the tourists come to feed the goats and the cows’ transhumances are green with love all the occasional shadow kiss tastes of September   turning round to come in all the bitter we need more salt the angelus begins who kneels down among the ruins of a strange idea came down from heaven reek of iodine and everything looks small today   like staring into the chalice of a flower mutations of large corporations compete with natural decay to isolate tragedy from news a blue feather floats into a street in Geneva the lake spumes a jet of counseled air     so high as if somebody was saying something three dogs in concert here like crystal goblets chinking it is as if the coast were really edifice and opal exalted voices of the children spending their penny in the willows   lead down by tile the rain-smart roof magpies many and an old man on a horse clops through the town no turns to two a couple feed their mounts on neighbor grass between this life and the bishop   or how Saint Guérin must pray for all ox and ass and Antoine’s pig and not till well into La Captive does the author get a name given by the beloved the provisional the sole determinatrix of local actuality   who says ‘mon cher Marcel’ or some such formula memory will not retain (nous lépreux, Paris se vaut une messe) all the famous jabber the mantle of this rock earth has so long endured names sweet as melons from Cavaillon   the perplexing simplicities of Doctor K she’s reading So what ís that bird there? open to a pretty magpie half by half black and white old Feirefiz the son of Gahmuret was divvied up like one of these   his lower parts a natural heathen white only the intelligence can sin age of reason in this season Guérin busy with sick cows the peasants cured the saint of wicked intellect and made him a patron saint of sick animals   well did they know that the body cures the mind the body builds the stone that puts the point of god high in the mountain air only the body is pure who can do no evil or at most be guilty of carnal inefficiency or dwindled milk o road of milk   that leads through Spain by Santiago on to Wales where Silver Road’s palace hits the sky the stars are her footmen and the clouds her gonfalons unfurled above the sleeping personage whose error is in the name inscribed   +++   melon seeds return to compost heap wasps are always near too many names swimming pool the different shapes of men meme taille et meme allure of these simple hearted merchants of romance   wash in dragon’s blood and sleep below water because only that one can whose life is so constrained by verbal sinews it might as well be immortal and it is the way a rock is always too busy to die   the long identities the place called Throat of the Devil where cyclamens are growing on the soaked wall of the ravine the name repeats itself in visitors who hurry home cherishing the word cyclamen cherishing the devil   whose rocky body they walked inside whose only body is their body wind comes down the valley hard every place is a body inside a body every body is wide open to invaders   chattering Flemish in the supermarket clash of chariots and melon reek subtract a wagtail from a pine tree butterfly swooping on the glacier the time of things is scribbled deep inside   each one alone and none to wait for kindness is all here and afterwards the farmers scratch it out of the ground and make room for new or where would the car go if the road didn’t differ with the mountain breathing   firelily they call it all around the town be careful of eternity the foam makes the fingers shake like a walk uphill in evening sunhaze down La Terche distance is chimera anyhow a plow   to furrow sky with and plant such wheat as grows to spring night with fierce little lights in whose gleam nothing but themselves alone light that just illuminates itself we pray to dark to augment the instrument of stars loro influenza   to have by these need-nights a void pronounced upon the Manifold or pleroma while equilibriums of ordinary passions totter to war the animal that tries to answer every question with its teeth   a kenning for it or a darling coal measures shouldering beneath the Yorkshire lies seven hundred years to put the language out and then the miners come in white silk scarves in sooty tweed jackets solemn saying naught   it has to tell everything or else believe because telling is a cure for understanding so when every word is spoken all the things are gone and the game plays itself beneath the apple tree the steel balls arc and clatter down and women laugh   +++   want to hide out from the jumbo jets up here class struggle and theology and find instead by skin a morality of leaf and bark academy of stone spent so much time walking on the mezzanine among those has-been lights men call the stars the girl next door was one of those pale Russky charmers eating in the lap of Lenin till the conversation banked smokeless fire of the shivaree everybody got married and no one came it is the rutabaga principle a head made of wood and eyes made of all that’s been lost   a woman on a ferris wheel a champion of pain o black Mercedes mother of all living course my street barricades of torpor and a strange lake-dwelling fish as if an eel caught philosophy and understood its practice as universal doctrine not just its own long way home   home is always the next port of call among the wolves three quarters up the mountain and the wind get a receipt for the paper kiss a glacier the shoulder’s sore from all it never carried because the fated burden belongs to the wind   even if the servant sneaks beneath the hedge and smokes and the snow melts not even by the core of August and not a single name of tree survives in English the man nipped a fox’s tail the tiger jumped hardware and liquid crystal the moon’s on fire   +   nominal tower hawk on the head oak fence gorse hedge poor hedgehog flat from car the spill of autumn in the yellow air the car is courage and a spear and sarx     means flesh when psyche’s gone to town and left her mirror all steamed over hot from her looking in it it is death for the soul to take a shower   Parmenides was right there’s never just one horse the palamino up La Chaux clematis on porphyry lord loveliest imperium nobody power but the body’s whim to know   to know by touch and stone remember to go to come to back home to tell these four will do and let the skin be quiet with the language of the stone     +   rectiform crucibular investigative flop to sail so long down the gutter in a folded newspaper origami Figaro and out to sea among cockles coracles limpets brooding on Lacan nautilus keeps secrets in their ingrown rooms   all the strategies beasts incarnate to avoid the simple blossom of the every which way wind or greedily to snatch the air inside and keep it there safe from music circulation of Lady Oxygen cancellation of the Other and sermon for the self     mitigate a nettle wear a leek in that sombrero let it rain hard down the cleavage of the mountain gush the cosmetic parables size of a sparrow allure of a jay shadows in the willow trees weave the next millennium’s religions   all subtle poetries of hoopoe and plover and gulls learn to fly at midnight and their white tidings will rouse the house no man will dare say their sermons for them and women will wake up and say their dreams   though Introduction to the Devout Life was written here if here is taken loosely cloud chambering la Tête Noire two horses and only two Poverty and Liberty broken china heaped outside old magazines every word has at least two meanings   and the skull lasts longer than the brain think on this voyagers with canoes on shoulders sweating through Ouisconsin portages of old the bone remembers in its strange fashion where the pudding of the flesh lets slip   our parents called us lust in idleness because Pontiac is cheaper than LaSalle and a ghost haunts only his own terrain humble as a bee disinclined to range firewardens on their towers dream Byzantium     the naked Empress comes to everyone who sleeps head of a monkfish caught on a tree branch breath is a flag and the army is the skin watch them falter through the rye oblivion is a ribbon knotted round a knuckle   or comes who calls a skull is resonant clear and clean is empty and a wind issueth which tells all the wit this bone once held Merlin or Mandeville a woman who knew all and poured her slim pitcher on the table   milk of all known valleys the precious molds make cheeses but the skull has two horns on it or six or four and the horns are hollow howl at sacred instances when priests think godwind blows and they blow back to answer mystery with reverence   the faces face each other it is marble each woman is a plausible envoy of her kind a plenipotent just arrived from the archaic one sees this face a lot in dreams and ten thousand years ago saw in their sleep too   mother of magnesium sea wife temptress the air’s vestal around her but she magnifies all occasions are the sun of time all space is touch all seeing is an anger of the eyes to choke the distances hardware of her hours gondola down the blood stream     always so much singing passes in profile we know this nose this hurry because a sky falls into place around such angular momentum thought it was a woman’s face in twilight seen hurrying towards the harbor when black sails come   cloud come along come along high head silver blue pirate sky with dory cloud down here invading pines describe alternate universe where all the strings uncoil at once and quarks are his and hers at last duality is our unity brother humans who leave behind   look up the names of things have you by the neck or choke your prayers with kisses left from dream the alternative to obvious is everything the alternative to everything is not nothing is the one thing permanent as the attention paid to it   come along donkey bray a buddy understands come along rapture to tease the sleeping nun ivory and silverplate brushes worked with amber anything to keep her hair out of her eyes and let the light in that part of the wind the human brain can see   don’t harden hearts against the felons on the gallows their lives’ last spurt loves the world round them into place for nothing lasts without the urgent want of it screaming yesness on a migrant hopescape until the cat seems to stand still and let you stroke it   the angelus rings over Europe sprinters wake early down in Athens and wonder what Greeks eat breakfast after all the high school philosophy a hundred meters faster than anybody to make sense or naumachy off Nauplion how fast a shmatte drives a skiff   believe the wind it’s all there is to be driven inside and out the first of all things and last is wind harsh pneumatology of a desert saint Antoine stoned with abstinence staggers on his crutch god the pharmakon for vision’s torments   he’s made crutches of his crucifixes and a bell and the huffy little pig looks past his robe hearing the ding dong of a lost religion in desert stagger market stagger DAX and FTSE stagger Glastonbury and watermelon pine   the girl with Corsican eyes the cloud down La Chaux this vision lasts as long as time and then Parmenides was sad all going and no coming as if the road wrapped right back on itself and gold people walked along it counting seeds   all they have he thought is what they leave behind a measure? a moonchild? a sad trapeze deserted by its acrobat?  every night god sends a little older than the television?  an advocate? dear god what has happened to her face?   +   beyond Seytroux the same cloud the power pylons march from mist everything surrounds everything and it’s only August the yellow people walk below the ground crowding upwards to the surface earth to be reaped like everybody else old snathe of time swung and who knows what or who the blade of it be old mariner   one is ages from the sea here or any maybe lake to milk the clouds up from or vaporetti in the bloodstream woke still feeling the wool of whose garment on his fingertips change road to make the horses whinny and the hinny haw spread the load around to balance lucency   decency? a stroke above the nine and be buried hear the gongulous toll bronze above the catafalque and the neighbor gospel lady hum in her pants suit priestcraft is triumphant and the church is cracked it’s the same car coming up the mountain over and over   they go to mass and come back chemical come cured small rivers with thick barges hoisting home lock by lock the boat of it ascends sweet miracle to get a loaf of bread out of a mountain with the troll singing at his forge unalcheming all that gold   Corbá the crow Corbassière place with a lot of them come down from the trees and get to know you the dark of other people’s lives the shame of living where so many didn’t and Abbot Guarinus fell from his horse right there and died     nine hundred years before her right over the pommel the saddle fell with him some monks were mournful carried here him north to the abbey he had founded the lepers were kept up the steep path up Corba’s hill everything intimate and sly the way death operates   Bernard hated the place but preached Jerusalem anyhow got away as soon as he could mistakes of weather that summer hail the size of pippins fell Crusaders left Marlene betrothed in Canada everybody becomes opera made of everything a cup of tea on fire in spirit sleep   the angelus woke him as if he were a village itself but nobody is anybody really just numbers in a jar with a few long wing feathers floating past to make apparent identity remember palpable entity but he had no right to talk about Parmenides   rescuing sleepy children from a burning orphanage itself the most remarkable structure in the hamlet they came there to ride horses and to sleep the long sweet sweaty sleep of horses till fire found them and no child tried to understand a few of the thoughtful   read books about the catastrophe in which they died as if memory could be anything recovered out of nowhere by impudent imposture of consciousness a written word face pressed against her breast where playful dragons sleep and every pool a wishing well they bend to read their fate     fact is fate every water’s ink nothing to do with Parmenides Rossini is closer nothing to do with anything but the Old Mill sea marsh the Jews of this man’s head and one of them uphill stumbling rock road and what she did was dry the face to this day she sits beside the road the napkin in her lap   an action is permanent things are not permanent terrible history of to do and the shame of not having a cabin full of crystals and not having a bathroom full of sea foam and a bed full of mermaids with nacre not having name in lights not even having lights   no name and pronouns too dear that season to make sense Arabic easier a gesture write a whole word in the air God made them as they did why should a priest go to Québec and bother half-breeds and Iroquois about a soul they share portage over thickets of indifference to the dry martini of belief   no question really asks itself it needs accomplices buses to the lake lost mail a phone call in the night one had not heard the donkey bray civilian light reformation light Waldensian light down this valley once voodoo light every heart carried that desire carries   wanting is the worst and most of magic a postcard from a pretty city on the shores of hell everyone arrives and no one sleeps a nightingale singing in the emergency room blood smells like copper copper smells like money money smells like sex   fear is general among the living that’s how the dead are different all desire and no fear not even fear of not getting what is desired no more than a stone can be disappointed the dead get everything hours later ran still on the mountain the stone cross wet   +   after this comes that and after that a mulberry and after that the ivy hurries up the wall and children and so forth and the name of this is Time a hollow raucous teens at the foot of the same cross pray for night and all things cover them they are simple with fear   and where does the mountain go to flee human weather fear is everywhere and it loves them too maite zaitut a kind of game to play with lakes and rivers walking in the rain to La Moussière pursued by bells the natives of this little town are called ‘wolves’   respectable as eggwhite like a blue policeman red republican procurer of indigent luxuries an earth to sleep on and stars for a hat truth is yellow truth likes to get hurt because then the lonely world turns opposite   and one know where one is and is not Parmenides who was that Parmenos he was son of nobody is anybody’s son it’s all a daughter a kind of island wine and kiss the sailor the lamb sleeps in the cottage shadow on some moss +   nix nihil nivis umbrae on the mountain don’t confuse a word with a preposition shadows on mountain statue of General Dessaix things stand for what they are is not a proposition a rime with calico an old woman in church   that much is clear the church was empty the holy water stoups were dry the cooper image of the saint is gone it’s raining no car to go home the city by the lake where Lakota war dances get big crowds   o god the grief of sunshine sad eagle feather the claws of what we do the broken axle the bent wheel rolling down the arm nobody can suffer weather like a lake it’s dreaming women wake in lightning   echo of a dance that passed one footstep into heaven a wolf looking in from the woods so many explanations all it really is is whatever anybody says it is isn’t it since no one’s listening salvation is not susceptible to proof or demonstration but the candle burns   kids play in the confessional rehearsing sins they’d like to do or are doing as they speak performing and absolving in one gesture and the dry old wood keeps creaking the substances of things are the only answer   who’s there? the light asks who’s asking says the dark and off they go again wind down the valley and the girl cries shadows of snow the dawn light caught on the massif the breathing of the light   before the sun takes hold an hour from the world over the neighbor mountain a dance?  a Dante? dark pink roses round the abandoned convent a sacred heart above the rose-embattled door and that man who shows his heart has roses too   but no one’s home pull back from that knocker the echoes of such a house will slay the unprepared the men-at-arms are far away the blue lights of their car hurtling down the cliffside road in rain and one is alone with the door that one has found     +     be normal maiden samphire semaphore club moss ruta graveolens heavy-reeking rue   spinnaker stands out from Thonon republic at home with lakes les foulques come swim with us   Voughà shi no the sign says least chance for meaning all day the difference dances   wanderfrei unsalted egg of a pastor without sheep have fun with us it means   but no one’s speaking so nothing to know a nail a board a brass band   chervil and leeks are close coffee cool enough to drink a peppermill for the pope   smooth cry willow jay a horse just happens a stream of travelers   vanishes in the woods what does the eagle care he’s written his book   in splendor the darkness sleeps inside the light the word forgives its mouth.                                                                                       7 – 13 August 2004                                                                                     Saint Jean d’Aulps