Here is my response to the print by Minna Sora. In part one I've marked the
change in each line with a clumsy punctuation mark to replace the intended
bold italics as the latter won't show up on plain text programmes; the
latter half of each line can be read continuously downward as a commentary
on the first half.


David Howard: LASSOS
 after an etching by Minna Sora


1

the spider inside your eiderdown | pater familias
it nimbled in while you were thinking of a girl | how your rubbish filled
her glory box
with long legs | polished like summer's promises through autumn
when she stretches | neck-high in harvest light
over your bed she stretches | like a model from Millet or a line by Minna
Sora
over the air you nearly inhabit | she is lost in something other than
thought

a halter-neck sunset | for the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm XIX)
slipping away from the wasp-waisted day | along with the spring tide
she said (say it) yes | sucking on the rind of the Lord's silence
beneath the relief of the Virgin | a submission insidious as the dust that
drifts into your nostrils
blood  | you lean over like a pensioner feeling for your heart
lines | with the simplicity of the ellipse dynamized by its eccentric motion


2

spin through the hour where everything knows
 everything: tree leaf
 stream rippling with out
and in: definitions you let loose

like stones thrown by a boy (well
 hello) who will sleep
 'the sleep of the dead'
beneath a coat that no longer fits

your body is a reminiscence:
 you are a climber
 untwisting until
his ropes are clear of that scarp, language

like a child you hide under the bed
 where no body's slept
 for centuries: you
miss the albatross, the spinnaker

unfurling in front of the window,
 the breeze picking up
 the phantom of day,
tumbling its has-beens into the port


3

While night shelters in
 the bones of
 passers-by
your knuckles whiten
 with spindrift.
 Tired plovers
thirst for more than salt.
 If a bird
 can't believe
in trees it shan't rest -
 although this
 reticent
shell rests without sense
 or belief
 at your feet;
dispirited 'it'
 waits for spring
 or neap tide..
Recall last summer:
 a halter-
 neck sunset
slipping off the wasp-
 waisted day
 she said Yes.
Her taut breast almost
 offered joy
 to your lips
before you withdrew:
 I saw my
 self seeing
my self, smelling her
 kelpie sex
 and sulphur.


4

In every no there is a miniscule yes which hopes to grow. The moment I say I
love you I'm aware of the contrary: I don't love you, just my idea of you.
Knowing this protects me against the tyranny of feeling, where attraction is
felt as an imperative rather than an option to be freely explored or
abandoned.

The heart demands more current than the workaday world can deliver so it
switches off automatically. Yet love declares itself best in the everyday
rather than the exceptional; it is in the gentle pressure of the index
finger on the neck rather than the electric kiss. At times my heart seems
charged by the divine, and sparks as a woman brushes past. Then I remember
that desire attaches itself to the past rather than the future; I desire
this woman because of the lost one who arcs between her parted lips.

So strong is my will that it can produce a simulacrum of patience, prudence
and fortitude at those moments when I feel most exposed, fragile and
erratic. The stronger my attraction the more extreme my reaction, so the
closer I am drawn the further I withdraw. Of course
nature does not acknowledge whatever's absent - it is prodigal with species,
variations, effects - so any withdrawal is artificial, a perverse tearing of
the world's fabric.


5

Your fingers are adroit at knots and lassos but
they also know rosary-beads..
By losing her he would lose
his hope, his tenderness towards women,
his sense of masculinity, his desire
for fatherhood and family.
You add: And the hills. And the sky.

Scratching at air as Minna Sora scratches at copper plate,
as a gardener scratches at peaty soil, surely
you'll uncover - what?  If what is evil
be real, why not known, since easier shunned?  (Milton)
When you skin an animal you touch the truth
about flesh. Beneath the relief of the Virgin
blood, beneath the blood

relief.