Blue Hour Read online

  —George Burgess, 1850

  On Earth

  “now appears to us in a mysterious light”

  “did this happen? could it have happened?”

  “everything ahead of her clear for the rest of her life”

  “La terre nous aimait un peu je me souviens.”

  “I try to keep from wanting the morphine. I pray with both hands.”

  “Lima, Alpha, Uniform, November, Charlie, Hotel, Echo, November, Alpha, Bravo, Lima, Echo. Pap. Lima, Charlie, Alpha, Zero, One. Acknowledge. Out.”

  “man and cart disappeared in the blast, but their shadows remained on the bridge”

  “these diaries a form of weather”

  (a future hinting at itself)

  (all of this must remain)

  (on illness, after radiation; a mysterious illness)

  (something) whispering

  (the sadness when a hand—)

  —with the resistance of a corpse to the hands of the living—

  “open the book of what happened”

  a barnloft of horse dreams, with basin and bedclothes

  a bit of polished quiet from a locked church

  a black coat in smoke

  a black map of clouds on a lake

  a blackened book-leaf, straw and implements

  a blue daybook hidden in my bed with his name

  a branch weighted with pears

  a brittle crack of dawnlight

  a broken clock, a boy wakened by his father’s whip, then the world as if whorled into place —

  a broken equation, a partita

  a bullet clicking through her hair

  a bullet-holed supper plate

  a burnt room strewn with toy tanks

  a century passing through it

  a chaos of microphones

  a city a thousand years

  a city shaken and snowing

  a coin of moonlight on the shattered place

  a confusion of birds and fishes

  a consciousness not within us

  a corpse broken into many countries

  a cup of sleep

  a desire to live as long as the world itself

  a door opening another door

  a feather forced through black accordioned paper

  a field of birds roasted by the heavens

  a goodness that must forget itself

  a grave strewn with slipper flowers

  a groundskeeper’s knowledge of graves

  a hole in light, an entrance

  a horse grazing in an imaginary field

  a horse of wire, wine-corks and wax

  a horse tangled in its tether

  a hotel haunted by a wedding dress

  a house fallen in

  a house fallen into itself

  a house in time, years from the others, light-roofed, walls shimmering

  a hurried life, a knife on newsprint

  a lace of recent snow

  a language known only to parrots

  a life in which nothing is lived

  a light, n’y voir que du bleu, blind to something

  a litany of broken but remembered events

  a little hotel in the city with its windows open

  a little invention for sweeping crumbs from the table

  a locket’s parted lovers face to face

  a man repainting his wooden house in stopped time

  a man vanishing while he danced

  a man who built cottages for tourists until he went blind

  a memory through which one hasn’t lived

  a message deflected by other messages

  a message from a secret self

  a mist of geese rising

  a moment of bluesmoke

  a moment of sycamores in low mist

  a moon caught in the bare hold of firs

  a moon haloed in high cirrus

  a name which should not be written

  a new world, entirely other

  a no-longer-beyond

  a parcel of copper wire, plastique and a clock

  a parrot learning its language from a ghost

  a past to come

  a phrase shifting epochs

  a pinch of salt, a fist of sugar

  a plumbago curtain withdrawn from the radiance

  a poplar in the sun, a pouch of coins, between layers of sleep where one lives another life beside this, awakening in the grave, brushing mother’s hair in the kitchen

  a random life caught in a net of purpose

  a record-keeper of human and earthly life

  a rifle loaded with moments

  a rivulet of sweat on the brow of the one keeping watch

  a road erased by light

  a road that ends nothing

  a salvage yard of burnt office furniture and household goods

  a scarf of smoke from a mouth

  a schooner sailing in a bottle of light

  a scriptorium

  a search without hope for hope

  a searchlight washing the fields

  a secret that stands apart from every secret

  a single turn, then years on the same road

  a snow of ash risen from winter months

  a spiral of being

  a spirit gold-breathed, something not made only of

  a stairwell spiraling

  a stalled ambulance

  a steep wooden staircase

  a sudden reticence that seizes the heart

  a syllable a dove

  a taxi and three gunmen

  a taxi its four doors open its lights out

  a telephone ringing in an empty house

  a ticking telex

  a traffic jam of refugees on a desert road

  a train rounding low sand hills

  a veiled window a camera hidden in a loaf of bread

  a veiled window where appears a revenant

  a walnut box of world and light

  a war-eyed woman

  a web of survivals

  a wind of burnt documents borne by wind

  a white rain, then your face becoming another’s

  a white road

  a white road billowing behind the relief trucks

  a white road ending in one’s own life

  a whitened eye clouded with gnats

  a willow vase, more bedsheets flaring over the furniture

  a wind lifting washed linen

  a wind-flock of butterflies

  a window of grilled hens

  a wire fence woven with pine boughs

  a woman in a blowing coat on the tarmac

  a woman rubbing the mirror until she is gone

  a woman sitting on a window ledge as if about to vanish

  a word dissolved into the yet-again

  a world set in language and deserted

  a world thought into being

  a wreath on water

  a year passing through itself

  a yellow mosaic of remains

  above a pacific slumber of white houses

  above a salon de thé

  absent in a garden of watered roses

  acres of blue wind

  after having gone all the way to the end

  after his internment and before his suicide

  again and again

  against a sea of recriminations

  against a winter pine, eating a sparrow

  against this, that

  air filled with ash, notebooks with sorrowing ink

  airfield to airfield

  algebraic music

  all night the boats calling out

  all of them, à-dieu

  all questioning to myself

  allées of tall trees

  alluvial plains

  alpha rays of plutonium

  although we are a small group on a private tour

  America a warship on the horizon at morning

  American university T-shirts among the executed

  among white birch stands

  an ache of such l
ight

  an ache of such light fixed in the bone

  an anonymous work performed

  an authorized death a non-authorized death

  an inn for phantoms

  an inner tact

  an object that disappears from the word

  an olive field of ordnance

  an ossuary

  an oven of birds

  ancient light having reached us

  and all questions, and all questions about questions

  and among the stars, those too distant to be seen

  and collective memory a dread of things to come

  and for women who desire men

  and have left undone

  and in the dream Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire

  and in the villages laundry hanging for months

  and in their eyes the years taken from them

  and it is certain someone will be at that very moment pouring milk

  and it is supposed that we are describing the world

  and its corresponding moment in the past

  and night, a knock at the window

  and night, a storehouse

  and on the battlefield, our anatomy lessons

  and phrases like: vanishing pianos

  and she body and promising light she exists

  and silence the most mysterious form of affection

  and standing in phosphorus rain, the man I have not yet married

  and that another will be uttering its first human word

  and the glass-winged bats hang in the darkness

  and the gun though loud has not discharged

  and the house? there. which became what it was because of us

  and the marigold the flower of worry

  and the shell etching a horizon into our window as it passed

  and the trains, the way they come, they tell me it is not the truth but I remember it

  and time, speeding as it departs

  and we fell into each other laughing the laugh of the newly dead

  and we, separated on earth by decades

  and what intervened more, war or the passage of time?

  and what of those who have made this same journey?

  and whispering what could

  and writing, the guardian of the past

  angelica, anne’s lace, antiphon, aria, ash, asylum

  another child filling its mouth with pillow

  ants in a city of peony

  apparition in a vacant house

  appears to feel the soul go forth

  apple blossoms and wet wind

  approaching the other with empty hands

  aria in time of war

  armfuls of furze, lupine, cornflower

  as a flame is linked to its burning coal

  as a mirror changes a face

  as a rain, however brief, changes the world

  as all afternoon the clouds float west to east, leaf-smoke and lake wind, pumice and plumbago gray, white-storeyed, rain-logged

  as any backward look is fictive

  as any conflagration or struggle is understood

  as any new act inflicts its repetition

  as crows mark the fog

  as for children, so for the dead

  as gloves into a grave

  as God withdrawing so as to open an absence

  as he appears and reappears in the unknown

  as if a flock of geese were following

  as if there were no other source of food

  as if to say goodbye to his own mind

  as if we had only one more hour

  as if with the future we could replace the past

  as in the childhood of terror and holiness

  as light or the retreat of light

  as memory, a futile attempt

  as more beautiful than it had been because it is lost

  as rain before it reaches us

  as rain strikes the pails in our tents of wakefulness

  as the fence has recorded the wind

  as the water in which the corpse has been washed

  as those who have returned have said

  as though when past and present converge, there is a gap

  as thought affects the universe in as yet immeasurable ways

  as unexpected rain craters the fields

  as when cicadas sing at the cenotaph

  ascending to the stone-cool stars

  ash manuscript, death aria, hunger fugue

  ash sailing ashen wind

  at once in this world and the world to come

  at the city’s edge the aged cooling towers

  at the edge of a forest once for making violins

  at the end of their journey, the petals they carry vanish

  at the end, where they carry his body

  at the point where language stops

  at the ticket window, and again in the fruit stalls, a kilo of open melon, in the train without stopping, rain of yellow tickets, broken turnstile

  at writing’s border, as if memory were of everyone, forgetting no one, such a cold happiness!

  awakening dans le vrai

  back to the blowing-out of birthday candles

  back to the crystal ring of a toast

  back to the furl of his shirt in a hot wind

  back to the razing of every edifice

  balefire, balcony, balm, belief, benediction

  bamboos bleached by light

  bananas hacked clean on the stalk, tangerines pulled down with their leaves

  bare trees in fog, umbrellas opening all at once

  barefoot by choice in the thin sea, by choice wearing black cotton

  bats hanging from the rafters, long polished corridors open

  bats singing along walls

  because we cannot emerge

  beds in the great open-air sickbay

  before and behind us

  behind the face that speaks to us and to whom we speak

  beings who have chosen one another

  bell music rolling down the roofs

  between here and here

  between hidden points in the soul

  between hidden points in the soul born from nothing

  between saying and said

  beyond what one has oneself done

  birchbark curling from the birch limbs

  birds dropping from flight leaving cries in the air

  birds in the clerestory, a tapestry of broken light

  biting hard the fear

  black corn in the fields, crib smoke, and bones enough to fill a sack

  black fingernails, blue hands, lost hair

  black storms of dream

  black with burnt-up meaning

  blessed be a knowledge that burns thought

  blood rose and love

  blossoming poplars

  blossoming walls, a grave digger’s tunic, a newspaper kiosk in rain

  blossoms yet again inside us

  blue lobelia rising along the gate

  blue-leaved lilies

  blue-winged roofs and rooflight

  boat scraps washed leeward

  bone child in the palm a bird in the heart

  bone-clicking applause of the winter trees

  bones of the unknown

  bones smoothed by water

  book of smoke, black soup

  born with a map of calamity in her palm

  both windows open to whatever may happen

  bottled light tossed into the sea with no message

  bring forth what is within

  bring in your whispering harvest

  broken clouds return from the past

  broken space, ruined birds, death’s heaven

  but in a change of worlds you weren’t you

  by someone who was not and would not revient

  by the time we were face to face

  by which we is not the plural of I

  Ça ne veut pas rien dire

  caged canaries before each shop as if the street were a minesha
ft

  canticle, casement, casque, cerement, cinder

  capable of a fate other than its own

  cathedral bells chiseling the winter air

  cathedral of shivering light

  Ce voyage, je voulais le refaire

  certain of thought but not of what is seen

  chandeliers in shellfire, chaotic light

  charnel house of the innocents

  checkpoints, roadblocks, barricades, points of entry

  children shouting goodbye in a hot wind

  christmas lights in smoke

  cinema does not describe this moment

  city through the filth of a bus window

  clouds of lake water, light and speech

  clouds of road behind us

  clouds returning to the sky from the past

  cocoa, whistling pine, ceiba, ylang-ylang, rain

  code for key turns

  cognac steadying the night

  cold fire-pit

  cold stalks of daylily

  come, love, through burning

  composed of light

  converging on my own life

  cordite wind, one’s first cordite

  corn black in the fields, crib smoke, bones, a rib cage

  corrugated fields, sheep on the bare fields of drought

  cotton mats spread on the floors of classrooms

  countries erased from their maps

  cratered memory cratered field

  crows took rye scraps from her hands

  curtains of rain opening

  dark, borne within us

  dead woman giving birth to rats

  dear Françoise of bravery under fire

  death is not the conclusion of earthly life

  death is the descent of the one called

  décryptage

  destroys what it briefly illuminates

  detritus reaching through a window washed away by wind

  difference which she is not to speak

  digging a hole in the floor for no apparent reason

  disquiet and the book of disquiet

  dissolved into the yet-again

  distance measured in space or time

  do we interpret the words before we obey the order?

  doors opening, stones humming the foretold

  dovecote, drum, dust

  doves on the gray limbs of winter poplar

  down a desert road aerially strafed

  drawings doomed to be destroyed by bullets