Jerome Rothenberg
Two sets of variations, for Cecilia Vicuña and Gloria Gervitz
WORDS & THREADS: A POEM OF VARIATIONS
for Cecilia Vicuña
1/
a body hanging
by a thread
cries emptiness
along with other words
a union of threads
& feelings
2/
in a single word
a metaphor
connecting word & thread
a language spoken
one word at a time
signals a fullness
3/
words woven
into structures
signifying what?
a thread conjoining with
another thread
a double threading
4/
from her interior & out
the thread precedes
the word
the space around
left for its poets
to fill with sound
5/
a tongue so delicate
it senses
words & memory
threads summon
other threads
threads foremost
6/
the threads are lines
fashioning forms
that crack the silence
every fiber
becomes a word
however mean
7/
passing thru the center
where words are threads
lines made of words
across an open plane
that separates the weaver
from her hand
8/
word-making
is the final word
words make
a double thread
fibers as palpable & tense
as words
AFTER MIGRATIONS: A POEM OF VARIATIONS
for Gloria Gervitz
the silence of the legs
she wraps around us
more thrilling still
than words
that shower down
louder than rain
to dazzle us
like pollen
or the cries
of shofars
words & photographs
in cages
dishes shattered
where the night
brings visions
neither you nor I
immune from it
a luscious madness
grinds the bougainvilleas
into dust or froth
the steam of rivers
seeping through
our kitchens
fever ecstasy
the more she masturbates
the more a whiteness
echoes through the water
beckoning a sexual kol nidre
a recklessness of clouds
green waters
the vertigos of rosh hashana
a background marked
by absences
as much as not
daylight erupting
in the east
the season too
when violets
bring madness
their voluptuousness
like yours or mine
our porches heavy
with their swelling
vagrant like acacias
in our dreams
of death & dying
verandas plastered over
syrups splashing
into empty washbasins
the delights of silence
of prayers with scents & colors
signal a break
a gulf insomnia exposes
a rosary lost in a synagogue
that raises questions
like a shattered faucet
air that snaps a willow
death that brings all willows down
like red fruit
turning brown
like fermentations bringing perfumes
to your fingers
less than nothing
like the wings of seagulls flapping
like saliva oozing
years a grandmother might count
reading the Zohar in a bathtub
whimsical & mad
like forced migrations
on a summer day
1.vi.22
[N.B. Based on nouns drawn by systematic chance from poems by Gloria Gervitz and Cecilia Vicuña and freely recomposed here by Jerome Rothenberg. The original poems to appear next year in Rothenberg and Taboada, A Book of Americas.]
Poems and poetics