Jerome Rothenberg and Arie Galles

'GRAFFITE,' three suites after images by Arie Galles, Part Two

[Continued from previous posting and commentary on Poems and Poetics.]

 

                                                  Part Two                                                 

TWENTY CLOUD POEMS

 

But none of them paused,
none of them wanted to be a cloud
— F. G. Lorca

 

cloud poem (1)

 

among the clouds

one face appears

 

a world of babes

& shadows                   

 

wrapped in its caul

 

 

cloud poem (2)

 

stretched out in coils

the bodies of the lost

lie dormant

 

babes as fair

as paradise

who sleep their dreams

 

so hard to lend an eye to

& to look inside

to see the earth below

 

more like the sky

when turning softly over

the blue above

 

goes grey

 

cloud poem (3)

 

inside the grey world

black eyes open

 

black lips

lie in wait

 

ready to suck down

the lights

 

the white

an opening more real

 

than morning

a limpid hole

 

 

cloud poem (4)

 

the dead return

 

the nearly dead

lie sleeping

 

keeping a line

between them

 

hungry, mutilated

faces lost

 

ghosts wrapped

in gauze

 

& set in rows

like sleepers

 

 

cloud poem (5)

 

land breaking through

at last    at sunset

 

at the breaking down

& folding up

 

of borrowed

time

 

 

cloud poem (6)

 

to be a cloud

face up

against the other

brighter cloud

 

more like an animal

a life gone by

who would not

rather be?

 

 

cloud poem (7)

 

denial

where the winds rush

lifting bodies

like false clouds

 

from darkness

into light

& back

to darkness

 

 

cloud poem (8)

 

a god is easy

sighting

 

easy body

of a man

or woman

 

easy dreams

of power

 

from the side

where light

fades out

 

the face of night

is lurking

 

 

cloud poem (9)

 

 

in flying

& the fear

of flying

 

stars pop up

then hide

their brilliance

 

in the shadow

little lives

fly by

 

& vanish

 

 

cloud poem (10)

 

a wound first

or a slit

in time, in sex

 

a pool or lake

 

an island

flying past

 

a smaller body

& a larger

 

open jaws

 

 

cloud poem (11)

 

look down

& see

what

to the eye

are only

clouds

 

the earth below

forgotten

(almost)

in the mind

is only

earth

 

 

cloud poem (12)

  

lost habitat

through which

a fish

 

or snake

breaks loose

a vestige

 

blown across

the sea

& sky

 

the wish for life

nearly

unmans him

 

before he dies

 

 

cloud poem (13)

  

the lines

across the earth

escape us

 

at the center

where the clouds accrue

a white Dot

 

calld a Center                       (W. Blake)

 

 

cloud poem (14)

 

 

a fracture

like a mouth

 

a gash

in space & time

 

unstable

changing

 

mouth on mouth

 

 

cloud poem (15)

 

 

to drift away

a cloud

no longer

 

lighting up

the sky

in triplicates

 

they vanish

where the night

begins

 

a smearage

smeared by hand

& darkened

 

 

cloud poem (16)

 

to drown

& to be gone

forever

 

swallowed

by the tufts

of smoke

 

a hateful

morning

half alive

 

I do not want it

 

 

cloud poem (17)

 

beauty so great

the fear awakens

& breaks through

 

the lights

that should bring joy

bring terror

 

bodies

bumps in time

& space

 

all that they write

turns back on them

erased

 

 

cloud poem (18)

 

now dark

the fingers of

one hand

glow past their time

 

an alphabet of sound

before all sound

goes black   condensing

colorless & cold

 

the ships leave harbor

in a flight

so bountiful

the night drifts by

 

 

cloud poem (19)

 

peninsulas like clouds

& clouds

like phantom fingers

 

freed from touch

the lines dissolve again

& now again

 

the gaps appear

like holes in time

ever anew

 

 

cloud poem (20)

 

the cloud as metaphor

makes me recoil

gliding above them

 

fearing a ledge

that will not hold

but succors me

 

only for now

this tender moment

vagabond

 

a paradise of clouds

that shrouds

the hell within*                                 *the life within

 

 

[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.]