Jerome Rothenberg and Arie Galles
'GRAFFITE,' three suites after images by Arie Galles, Part Three
[Continued from previous postings on Poems and Poetics, here and here.]
Part Three
THE PEPPER TREES
They are gone, the pepper trees
— F.G. Lorca
1
the more a man’s arms
stretch
to reach the woman’s
& the branches
can no longer bear
their weight
2
moss is foremost
if the mind will entertain
matters of fact
a tactile splendor
3
ferns & rind
the black a distance
deeper than a star
4
heavy as a heave
the layered cork & wood
cry out to you
or is it only
something furtive
hidden
in your heart?
5
at the side a shadow
like a child
beside the fallen bodies
the last chance
for sleep
6
serpentine
a limb athwart
coiled branches
forest dreams
& shiny shadows
7
is there a black hole
here on earth?
a place so deep
that even leaves
turn black
8
spiny dust
over the swollen
bark
the hairy wood
is like a man’s flesh
or a woman’s
9
a memory of where
we lived & swung —
our place in nature
10
to seat yourself
inside it
ache of trees
& ache of majesty
he who falls
recovers grace
only a little
11
the ferns take over
& the question
rattles our minds
where have the bodies
gone where
in the world is love
12
plain in our sight
the black hole
carved into the center
limbs askew
more what the woman gives
a field of light
below her
down where the world
takes root
13
they dance together
taut arms rising
from dark trunk
in front of which
the dancer
leaves her shadow* * her meadow
eager to draw him back
14
that which is lost
leaves only a wound
behind
the mystery of light
more than the mystery
of something lost
the memory of where
we were
guarded by snow
a scar that will not heal
15
between an island
& the main
blind spring arrives
the strange allure
of black on white
drives color from the brain
refraction from the eye
16
is every image that we see
seen from a height
& every block of wood
as stiff as stone* *as bone
receivers & believers
we let the shadows go
17
counting by threes
is learnt by rote
nohow forgotten
more as a number known
by comrades
than by a bride & groom
the tallest tree of all
no taller than
those that surround him
the way that every count
leaves space & air
between
18
brought back to earth
the sadness
of mute nature
waiting for the dead
to rise & shine
19
like stony ridges
schist & caulk* * chalk
no sign of verdure
but the layers
stacked each one
atop the next
offers a broken wall
a perch for demons
20
eggs dropped
along the way
or hanging from
the rotted bark
a bed laid bare
the rank turd
lies within
firm in its nest
eggs & turds
the rest is barely
bark & sunlight
traces of a life
long gone
[N.B. As part of a longer series of suites, Galles’s images here begin as black and white photographs that he then translates, as with his monumental 14 Stations, into three sets of twenty graphite drawings each, to which are added twenty poems of mine as linkages. My own procedures, after the fact, are largely improvisational, speaking to his images while maintaining a sense of distance and independence. To borrow from the medieval Japanese, the principle here is not one of direct comment or illustration but of something like juxtaposition and/or collage “wherein it does not matter that the upper and lower part are put together in a seemingly unnatural and arbitrary way so long as they cohere in the mind.” In the dance between us, it is he who leads and I who follow, hopefully always in sync.]
Poems and poetics