Janet, I particularly like the document aspect of this - the incomplete
sense of factuality. The poem's opening stanza names the genre of what is
seen (security cameras, mansions, etc.) but gives no detail. As if the new
world is entirely familiar cookie-cutter template of "semblables." If not,
that one appears to be coming to most places for sure.
I am not sure about what happens with and after the "a half world away"
stanza.
But the last stanza I like and resonates back to the generic nominal
emptiness of what the poem sets up at the start.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Where there is a break from the "Tenderly" series
And a few poems by ninety-year old mom on her takes on a few American cities
(Omaha, New York and Miami), with a side-related step ref to a forthcoming
(July) wonderful book from Dalkey Archive of Waldrop translations of Jacques
Roubaud's multiple takes on the streets, etc. of Paris.
And if you are in NYC on May 31, I am reading with Susan Schultz and Mark
Wallace at the St. Marks Poetry Project. Be happy to meet you there.
> When the train came, I cried
> ----------------------------
>
> I walk with the ghosts who walk on the beach.
>
> I photograph the rails,
> the security cameras, the grey sea,
> the mansions on the hillside.
>
> I touch the stone walls,
> sit on the steps, breathe the air,
> read the graffiti.
>
> I climb the hill and look at the view.
>
> I stand at the gates,
> peer at the carvings, record the leaves
> and branches, the signs.
>
> Half the world from here and just under
> my skin
> Thousands of miles in a breath, in a word
> Thousands of steps in a sigh, in a song
>
> I buy a ticket and wait for a train.
>
> There are names for everything but you
> have no name
> for this.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
> Poems at Proximity:
> http://www.arach.net.au/~huxtable/janet/proximity.html
>
> "When one acts in accord with the time, the yang energy
> is expansive, like thunder going out of the earth and
> rising forcefully into the sky, startling an area of a
> hundred miles with its rumble, so that all demons flee.
> The life-giving potential continues increasing, and the
> earth is always covered with yellow sprouts, the world
> blooms with golden flowers. Wherever one may walk,
> everywhere is the Tao. No happiness is more delightful
> than this." Liu I-ming, trans. Thomas Cleary
> -------------------------------------------------------
|