Hi Alison,

here's a blinkered response, to be taken with a giant economy pack of salt.


Randolph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 6:05 AM
Subject: Couplets


> the irises are plundered
> from the king's empty gardens
>
> a man grins into the sun
> from a doorpost
>
> a child draws a circle
> in the mud


the first couplet here is having difficulty keeping up the the second two.
Are the irises and king garden escapes from Eliot?


> remember you are unwelcome
> and the door is shut
>
> a radio plays Bach
> in another room
>
> like a dream of presence
> long ago

The first two are full of things in a way the third isn't. I particularly
like the way the first one is hinged so that one can be on the giving or
receiving end of it. And the Bach in another room plays very sharply.


> no one is waiting
> at that blank address
>
> no one wishes for your presence
> no one will welcome you
>
> the sunlight in that room
> tastes of dust
>
> your footprints in the silence
> will frighten you


Yes to the first two, but the third is deprived of oxygen by too near
proximity to "dust in the air suspended etc" from Four Quartets, with a dash
of the spidery solicitor from the Wasteland.


> everything that is said
> everything that is not said
>
> the jar of tears
> by the door of the theatre
>
> where tiny fish
> swim like words of light
>

Wow! Gorgeously concrete. This is my favourite.

>
> all the vacant dears
> shimmering through domes of pleasure
>
> pressed to a million tongues
> like wafers of belief
>
> that pass through a camera
> from the realm of the blessed
>
> they are so cold
> their faces crumple on impact
>

These are lost on me.

> in the raw wash of dawn
> birds assert their territories
>
> implacable hearts hammering
> their iron hungers
>
> their cursive flight
> a plain fact of survival

This has possibilities. Though I'm not sure about "raw"


> ***
>
> her hands are paler than fear
> evaporating at dawn
>
> a self of dust raining
> in your blood, a breath
>
> dispelling soundlessly as the gross day
> plies its anaesthetic
>

Like the suggested sound puns "reigning in" as in horse or monarch.
"plies" isn't earning its keep.

> sweet jangles that ripen
> to humid music
>
> thinning in the shrill
> electronic air
>
> scraped to a smile
> fluttering and dying nervelessly
>
> on impermeable glass
> which pullulates with promise
>
> the market's bland
> pornography of want
>
> which strangles the infant
> scream of love

What's electronic air? Suggest the music you get when put on hold on a
phone.
The ratio of energy to direction needs attention here.


> two clowns are dancing
> in a casino of sand
>
> their glass hearts
> are filling up with rain
>
> money ripples past them
> through a crowd of dolls
>
> and clogs the early freeway
> with empty cars
>
Intriguing. Cd their glass hearts fill with something more interesting than
rain?

>
> a sleep uneasy with murders
> a sun swollen with blood
>
> a trinket of human hair
> an empty village
>
> a child locked in a room
> and footsteps receding
>

The last two overpower the sun swollen with blood.

> where shall I place my lament?
> the heart is deaf
>
> the stars have vanished
> entirely

Mild protest against use of deafness as a metaphor for the inability to
communicate.


> o slim foot
> of a Giacometti madonna
>
> through ink's astringent passion
> an immediate dew
>
> ripens the moistening eye
> as a shy doe breaks
>
> the mind's foliage
> gravid already with myth
>

To my ear the "shy" and "already" are redundant.

> no one set the violet
> in these rocks
>
> the desert hunters
> planted nothing
>
> but the raw bone
> of their song

I like this, but, again, wonder has it escaped the gravitational pull of
Eliot's rocks and bones in the desert. Though he hasn't copyrighted the
entire ecosystem. More evidence of desert experience perhaps would defuse
this?

> I was never politic
> the mute sky punishes me
>
> a great empty bell
> trembling with starlight
>
> that I cannot hear
> I cannot understand

Yes!

> my soul thirsts, o beloved rain
> listening for your steps
>
> irises slide through ash
> towards the rumour of your undressing
>
> and whisper in your humours
> all night long

Another thumbs up. Lovely music in the fourth line particularly.

> absolute poem
> mocks the empty hand
>
> divides itself by infinity
> resolves as nothing
>
> blindly grasps
> the hems of stars
>
> as if they were a proof
> against this finitude
>
> fractured by religions
> and histories and wars

"the empty hand" could just as well be deleted.
What about "denominated by infinity"?
I'd be tempted to drop the last and go for "against this fractured finitude"

> death is not a man in black
> death is no one
>
> no one comes
> down the fluorescent corridor
>
> through the numberless doors
> and sits by a white bed
>
> to answer the stubborn pain
> of an old woman

A bit ordinary?


> there was a pool that solaced you
> in the middle of the forest
>
> in the middle of the pool
> was a green eye
>
> it looked straight into the sun
> it never blinked

I don't get it.

> a rippling mail of light
> dulls to grim oils
>
> under night's blunt keel
> whose wash of litter nudges
>
> small white crosses of bone
> crumbling on the shoreline

Is white _and_bone necessary?
The rhythm stops at keel making it hard for the wash of litter to
articulate.

> and when you open the door
> you will find the irises on the table
>
> gathering night in their petals
> just as you dreamed

Lovely.