Pierre Joris: From 'The Gulf (Between You & Me)'
[NOTE. These texts, originally published in Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012 (2014), were commissioned after the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion & oil spill by Donald Nally & the Crossing Choir to be set to music by Gene Coleman, Chris Jonas & Gabriel Jackson. The work premiered in Philadelphia in 2014, and had its first European staging in Luxembourg in October 2015.
— The first two sections of the work are partial writing-through’s of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem A Throw of the Dice, using both Daisy Alden’s & my own translations. That poem, despite being usually called the first “abstract” poem of the modern avant-garde, does tell a story: that of a shipwreck & the drowning of its captain.
— A number of the spoken phrases in the second section are taken from interviews with Sheri Revette by Antonia Juhasz in the latter’s book Black Tide (Wiley, 2011), talking of her husband, Dewey Revette, a driller killed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 2010. Sheri tells the story of their love and life together and the moments after Sherri's discovery of her husband's death. (P.J.)]
1 — RIGWRECK
A THROW
what do we know, what can we know?
OF THE DICE
of science, of love?
only the facts, that is to say
only effects
NEVER
can this happen
NEVER even if, can this happen
in science, in love
EVEN WHEN CAST
Indra’s net of love,
EVEN WHEN CAST
money’s net of stone
what do we know, what can we know?
What has caused this gulf
between water & oil, you & me
IN ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES
(no circumstances are eternal,
AT THE HEART OF
of this rigwreck
What will we know?
We know only effects / have to choose
the causes
A SHIPWRECK at the heart that the
gulf widens
between water & oil, you & me
fish & water, me & you
that the
Abyss
between water & water, you & you
me & me, oil & fish
widened then whitened
there is slack growing
raging underwater in the heart
underheart in the water
on the brain
what we know is oil & water don’t mix
what we know is fish & oil don’t mix
what we know is you & I have to mix
what we know is you & I have to live
under an incline
clinamen of a warming clime
an angle not an angel tells us
me & you want to live
even if despair desperately soars
& gets an angry rise
form the phantom pain of its own planet’s sore
broken wing
a second-hand angel singing Ecce Homo,
Ecce Homo, though not so Sapiens,
conscious liar,
beforehand relapsed, liar, liar, not released from wrongly steering
the flight of this planetary love affair
no use repressing the outbursts
of this lethal love affair
cleaving the bounds
of this oily love affair
at the root of greed
set the rig afloat
a ship finally a ship
the impossible change
for deep inside weighs the admission of impending disaster
the shadow hidden in the depth
by this by this arrogance this arrogance
at the root of greed this arrogance
at the root of arrogance
this love this love for more
a more always spelled out in money
blows the rig up this morning
will blow the world up tomorrow
there is no alternate sail
ship earth in space / space ship earth
the only raft for dumb sapiens
who has to learn to love
this imperfect raft
there is no alternate sail
dumb sapiens has to learn love
has to learn to adjust
has to learn to look to the spread
the spreading of disaster
has to learn to jump
its yawning depth
as great as any abyss
between you & me
the hull of a rig
the hull of a ship
careening from side to side
turns over & is for a moment cathedral
burning church of the worship of money
brightly floating death flaunting love
rigwreck rigwreck
a catastrophe here now,
the circumstances local & global
not eternal only this now
cannot grasp the hawser
opens a gulf
between life & death
a millimeter uncrossable
a BP centipede monster
at the heart of this rigwreck
abolish abolish
abolished responsibility
Moloch, Moloch
Moloch —
rules, Moloch
rules
all rules broken when Moloch rules.
2 — LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
CHOIR:
THE MASTER is no master
the master is a corp a corpse a corporation
beyond outworn calculations
where Moloch where Moloch arisen
is a manoeuvre with age-
less scorn for you & me
scorn for love / love forgotten
the master is absent
now present here only Dewey
could have gripped the helm once
upon a time & called his mates
now locked into the assistant driller’s shack’s C chair
can his love hear him
SOLO (Dewey’s voice):
Thirty years offshore
& I can smell a rat
leaving a rig, I can, I do right now —
I’m toolpusher, not master,
should sleep but follow
inauspicious orders
tomorrow’s another day, night’s growing darker
something’s wrong here, something’s off
shouldn’t follow inauspicious orders
It is night / the only light
is tomorrow is Sheri
Sheri my love a gulf between us
my message reaches across a gulf
awaits you listen listen
left it this morning at first light
O why am I not ashore I knew
the bosses would lie would cut
corners until from this conflagration...
CHOIR:
at his feet mud overflows the rig floor
shoots through the derrick
the blowout preventer’s does not act
the well’s blown out
Dewey dead now in this conflagration
on the no way unanimous horizon
end of the horizon
of the deepwater horizon
a Gulf prepares itself
the fist would grip it
will swallow the tossed & burning rig
as one threatens destiny and the winds, the elements all
eleven die
the one Number which can be no other
eleven die
their Spirit hurled
into tempestuous fire gas explosions
nothing can seal the gap nothing can go proudly
eleven die
love left ashore a Gulf
between their loves & their corpses
eleven die
eleven die.
SOLO (Female Voice/ Sheri):
Dewey got pretty hot
Dewey never—ever—ever
loses his temper — never, ever, ever.
If he really believed this could have happened,
he’d never, never let them do it.
Calls at 9 a.m. each morning
missed his call that morning,
phone didn’t ring, he left
a message I deleted as
I knew he was coming home
knew he was coming home.
CHOIR:
Don’t hesitate
cut off from the secret they withhold
cadavers that will not wash ashore
caught rather than dressed
now in shrouds of lethal
oil & dispersant pearls
old madmen play the game on behalf of the waves
one surges over the chief toolpusher
a directly shipwrecked
all-American love story flows over:
of the man no submissive graybeard
who just liked being home,
ancestrally huntin’, fishin’, playin’ on his tractor
not to unclench his hand
She’ without a ship
a small place in Ohio, no matter where vainly there was:
Kmart in walking distance,
mall twenty minutes by car.
They met when he drove up to the local Kerr
gas station where Sheri worked.
SOLO (Female Voice /Sheri):
It was love at first sight
We had the old time Coca-Cola coolers.
He reached in for one he was sittin’ there
we were talkin’ that was it…
He had this smile. It would make you melt.
Love at first sight.
CHOIR:
Contracted before & above the worthless wellhead showed
She was 18 & he was 21 when they got married
an all-American love story
the legacy of his disappearance
yet back then no gulf between them
to some unknown the ulterior immemorial demon.
SOLO (Female Voice):
It was love at first sight.
When we got married so young
everyone was looking for a baby.
There wasn’t one.
We were just in love.
CHOIR:
From dead & narrow lands
induced / seduced
by an old man toward this supreme lethal
conjunction with probability
this morning she expected him home
sister called at 5 a.m. said turn on the t.v.
she knew right away that he’d be dead.
Even his boyish shadow
caressed & polished, drained & washed
not to return wave-softened
unyielding bones stripped off
lost among the debris
Poems and poetics