Loss

Never have I seen such a lost generation.

Never a generation so lost.

With all the means to know,

where they are, why they are, when they are.

They don't know who they are,

where they are, why they are.

Such an absence of care for what's to come.

Such an absence of care for who's to become.

Such is the way of the teens I've taught this year.

Apathy meaning an absence of path,

reluctance an absence of luck.

Following whoever's footsteps are doomed.

Following whatever's the least useful to them.

Smiling wryly at their own purposelessness.

Smiling earnestly at others' failures.

Allurement of easy money and easy pleasures

blinds them, leads them to restlessness.

Never sadder nor happier than ever before.

Never had so little interest in themselves,

never had been so focused on their selves.

So lost to reality and its codes.

Coding their own ethereal kingdoms.

So hopeful, so hopeless.

No dreams, no boundaries

in a world which forsook and strengthened its frontiers.

Both prisoners and wardens of society.

Escapist strategies of the dominator

landing off-target rockets in the landscape –

none ever beheld such avoided butchery.

But the worst, warded off by school walls,

is yet to come.

When they will realise what's to come

when they will realise what's in for them

when they will compute time and money

and add two and two and marvel

that it makes three, and not four,

never again, and smile wryly,

the unfairness of the world suddenly made visible,

suddenly a constant, an exact exfoliator of rest.

Yes, they will think back, and smile –

even then they knew, had feigned ignorance,

had trudged on, secretly hoping for the best.

 

Restlessness

Whenever I get some good news
I always feel this restlessness
This unfulfillable envy that I lose
Only when I realise it's just mum's absence.

The Soothsayer

Others buried their gaze in the constellations,

Others, again, looked into alignments,

Others still, wondered at numbers and sums,

Other eventually stared at cloud patterns,

Others' devotion lay in the paths of the palm.

He, on the other hand, looked into streams,

under the bark of the willow trees,

snapping twigs, uprooting lilacs for inspection,

tasted and observed the water in the ponds,

pried into the entrails of dead cattle.

He would often lie down on the ground

and examine what his hands raked in,

would ruffle dry leaves at his ears.

He, spurned, would stand atop coombs

and listen to the variations in the wind

for portents of war, peace, happenstance.

The Stragglers

Stragglers waited along the bend

like swept-in-heap leaves

bundled closely because of the wind

and the late, off-season cold.

We had seen such drama before,

but the trees' roots seemed to rake in

something other than dust.

Wild calla would have to be in bloom soon,

and snowbells promised a heady fragrance.

Outside these, nature seemed bland,

controlled, safely harboured in man's lap,

spring fuelling the sap leafwards.

An odd zeitgeist wafted from wide-open windows

along whirls of the burnt fat of bacon,

(every day felt like a Sunday morning)

elderberry wine and fresh toasts.

Great puddles of sunlight bathed the kitchen tiles

and bounced on glasses and glasses,

revelling in a high-flown morris.

The swish-swish of the sweeper grated the hours

which the town clock failed to strike,

infuriating the pell-mell stragglers.

Some were content with just staying put,

and silence had been requested a long time hence.

Rigor mortis wasn't such a bad bargain, after all,

though the wind made them more alive

than necessary, while the trees seemed unaffected,

albeit slanting slightly to the south.

Over a year ago, the last of the stragglers had smiled.

Unimportant as it appeared to the-then onlookers,

this never happened again, and things which happen

only once are worth jotting down,

both philosopher and carpenter say so.

So he had smiled and had fallen to the ground,

in an exact similitude of death.

There he lay still, covered in leaves,

unheeded by the other stragglers

who went on waiting along the bend.

They thought they were quite happy there,

and one of them had declared, one day:

“This is a good enough place to straggle.”

The tree under which they had settled

shaded them from the sun come Summer,

shielded them from the wind come Autumn.

Ravished their eyes in Spring.

Only in Winter would they truly be miserable.

They had been there so long

that they had quite forgotten

who it was they had walked behind,

and for what particular reason.

The leaders had long been gone

out of their sight, out of their mind.

Oddly, and by the same token,

was also put out of their mind

the very reason why they had halted –

probably somebody had wanted

to relieve their bladder against the aspen.

For all they knew, here was as good a spot as any.

But – and this was uncanny –

nobody had sent for them

nor had their number dwindled.

Odder still was that ensued no mayhem,

nor any resentment was kindled.

They had passed from walking to waiting

faster than can strike a bolt of lightning.

And it was generally considered no fault

of any who had left nor of any who was present.

Even though the situation had precipitated

a whole set of problems, from losing track of time

to hunger, to stiffness in the limbs,

to quick fits of boredom and hatred.

But they could rest, chat with the locals,

behold life answer about its many calls.

Yet they flickered like the leaves of the aspen

in the faintest of breezes ever,

their own breath seemingly shortened –

menaced by the slightest sweeper –

covered in dust, shame and light.

Under cover of language

Under cover of language

words lurk, in cobwebbed

nooks and dusty crannies

in the dark pits of the mind

like throbbing guts

munching, mulching,

digesting, breaking down

the amino-acids of concepts

the red cells of the consonants

and the tissues of the vowels

the blood in the syntagmatic veins

waiting for the faintest cut

to spill their dyscontent on the tiled floor

vomiting tropes

expelling unspelt words

sickness of the language which snaps, cracks,

malfunctions, disrupts and blocks

and – sometimes – wrecks

when it should plant – and hacks

when it ought to tend –

and what it doesn't make it mars,

what it doesn't build it ruins –

In every body in wait lie

apocalyptic words.

The lion and the lambs

"Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life."

Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1900 - 1971)

Fragment #98

Serenity in impending doom

quietude in the hurricane

light in the darkest gloom

hope in the harshest bane –

thus are the dragons

that in here loom.

N'oubliez pas

S'il-vous-plaît, n'oubliez pas de:

• le matin, ouvrir les persiennes
• changer de mes draps la parure
• poursuivre la lecture des Persanes
• vous occuper de ma manucure
• arranger mes oreillers
• me parler gentiment
• ne pas me réveiller
• cajoler mes sentiments
• changer l'eau des fleurs
• faire comme si de rien n'était
• penser à mon bonheur
• me faire profiter de l'été
• penser à mes richesses
• oublier mes défauts
• tenir mes promesses
• accueillir les nouveaux
• me tenir la main lors des injections
• masser mes jambes inactives
• faire de ma sieste une sédation
• me ramener au bord quand je dérive
• me dire qui est venu me voir
• m'assurer que j'aurai des visites
• au besoin rafraîchir ma mémoire
• au besoin les faire venir vite
• mettre de la musique en fond
• ignorer mes silences
• tourner mon regard au plafond
• vous armer de patience
• parler comme si je n'étais pas là
• faire comme si je n'existais plus
• faire comme si j'étais juste las
• parler comme si vous y aviez cru
• ne pas oublier de prendre les devants
• au besoin, ouvrir mes paupières
• vous assurer que je suis vivant
• le soir, éteindre la lumière.

Nombre de jours à vivre : 18

Nemigen

La vieille cité se traîne, hagarde et cruelle,

Dans les nappes de brumes qui émanent du fleuve.

Elle se souvient avoir dû faire un choix,

Il y a longtemps, alors neuve et belle,

Mais seules les conséquences et leur poids,

Quasi-posthumes, secouent ses articulations trop sollicitées

Comme une vile arthrose.

Elle était moins amère, avant,

Quand ses marbres étaient roses,

Même quand elle était au levant,

Même quand elle sentait le rance.

Il y a dans son air aujourd'hui

Des pestilences qui bouchent ses narines,

Une amertume qu'elle subit démunie,

Mais avec laquelle chacun se sent uni

Dans sa déshérence chagrine.

Soudain, d'une seule voix, elle se secoue,

Branle ses quais et ses dômes,

Exhume d'un coup quelques vieux fantômes,

Et comme une lionne harponnant au cou

Une vieille proie qu'on avait pensé morte,

Elle rugit d'une voix rauque et forte,

Un lambeau de chair en gueule,

Qu'elle vivante ne veut entendre plus

Ce mot entre tous si veule

Ce mot qui interdit tout salut.

La bouche en sang et secouée de sanglots,

La cité assassine se love de nouveau

Pour digérer sa pitance en ses sombres flots

Fière d'avoir retourné le mort en son caveau,

Une ultime fois, comme un pied-de-nez au sort,

Se vautrant un peu plus dans son malheur,

Un peu plus dans le souvenir d'alors,

Dans le ressouvenir de ses plus belles heures.

The Sea Peoples

No other graver matter

than a piffling presence

or a downright absence

of dialogue

than a definite pick

between null and void –

unfair to say the very least

on that damned old sea

yet even then there is our

leaning propensity

to steer downwind

right under the weather

where muted voices are heard

muttering of softened catastrophes

when we bailed out a leaking ship

with a punctured thimble

Attention! Attention! is cried

quite forgetting

the mere presence or absence

of ropes and pulleys

midst the roaring of the waves

we add insult to injury

tend to our wounds with handfuls of salt

furl the sails! is heard

unfurl the sails! is heard again

we don't know which order is right

or if we heard 'light' or 'fight' or 'night'

we sail on a sea of silence

we sail away

we sail a way

the wind howls and the sails,

half-unfurled in the confusion,

are off the barking gales

land ahoy! mirage ahoy!

daydreams pervade the wake

we ought not to drowse

there are skerries to be avoided

we ought not to

but our wakefulness is scuttled

by reveries in broad daylight

flooded by eerie sunbeams

– calenture on the prowl –

we have hearts of men nonetheless

stout hearts of men honed in deserts

sharpened on seas

bled by mad wenches

filled with bad rum and snuff

and now with rheumatisms

and prone to snuffling

ether does that to us

and under ether the least shard of light

appears as a dagger in the underbelly of the clouds

under ether the least drop of water

appears as a sky-engulfing sea

the least whisper a world-crushing typhoon.

Eager to make a name to ourselves

like the peoples of the sea back then

we had no other possibility

but to take to the ocean

and choose between the silence and the fury.