A CHIDE'S ALPHABET : EMMA LEW

EMMA LEW


Man Coming Back as a Bird


In the office he unfolded the papers.
Other times I saw him press his pencil
harder, and still no sense. We were watching,
I thought, a man tapping on windows,
too much in love with his ink and spit.
Genius who made night in his little room,
he drove himself from rain to hail,
with his rigid thanks ("there is something
wrong with me"), wounding himself
where the buses go up the street.
I don't know for sure why he had
such a hard time with words,
why he clenched his fists and went forth
to the midnight feast as if to crumbs.
I felt great fear for him in the barren fields.
I couldn't have found a plain limb to touch.
What country did he mean: "shining
in its illness"? I think he saw a moment
where he could fly up emerald, make
his mark as if his axes cut down nothing,
as if he had been crossing bridges all his life.



Pursuit

I have not had fortune but I have seen the resplendent moths
of Daghestan. I have travelled through clusters of their castles
and found them wingless, lain deep, like the oak apple.
And in Angola I have seen hundreds of butterflies grieving.
I have seen butterflies swerve like the fiddle and the bow.
I once heard a boy sing on the deck of a Black Sea steamer,
There is a small and fragile bug!
The respiration,
the pulses of the heart, the beating that bursts the lid of the shell.
In sago I found the weevil itself, and I smelled the perfumes
of the males. Often I've dreamt of the wasp's tumbled journey,
the mosquito's guilt and thrift, how the ant slipped down
to haunt the grass, how the hornet left only the skin of my fruit.
For insects have a beauty that hurts, and that may even darken
the sky. They drum with their bellies upon the twig. They have
learned to cleanse their blood with light. I have seen a mantis
of a delicate mauve impaled on the flea's single spine. I have
known the mere segmented grub, and I have shared the earth
with lice. In the forests of the Congo, I recorded the stickiness
of swarms. O unforgettable flies of Palestine! O cicadas of Spain
in the year I was born!




Prey

I was daydreaming about wiping out the whole school
I was rehearsing and perfecting the 'gentle giant' approach
Rebellious and defiant, had no ambition
Death is a beginning, it's beautiful

I swore I never shot at a windowless wall
I was calm and denied, and was allowed to drive away
And killed a young bride, inconclusively
It's sad, but I don't live there anymore

Not like you'd expect - real dark, red blood
Humid in the city known for its beer
I was wrestling with a list, perhaps posing as a cop
And I wrapped my fingers around your throat. Did you panic?

I'm not an expert, I don't know the terminology
They were looking for a guy who was ghoulish or foamed
It's a slow road with a lot of curves
Maybe I should have toyed with her more



Her Embroideries

He was the shadow of the deep bed.
He was very beautiful and, as always,
there was something perfect,
as though I were his cousin.
On the map he had shown me
a forest, but there was no such forest,
hence the lies, the discomfiture,
and the rest: the manor, steeped
in the odours of freshly ploughed
earth; shops rife with Trieste dialect.
And his messages ended with vows
like, "Believe me, I am always
at your side." It is impossible
to relate what or how he played,
the sudden modulations that
I could not grasp. I felt at such times
that only my body was riding,
yet I said the loveliest things.
He awoke with the violence
of the sensation, so that I was forced
to fasten with pins. His sisters again
donned their sombre mourning.
Even the sea-birds lost their way.
And then the moon rose and shed
a different light. Listen: how he
dreams, how he weeps!




Usual Rosettes

Once, twice. Today, tomorrow. There will always be a limit
Marc Chagall

Early flowers caused the frost, but the plane tree
threw its shadow, and the lilac bush stood cool,
shocking the house like fresh linen. My father
supported my mother in such precautions.
They quarrelled and broke, no matter how
it simplified things, and her large white skin
was smooth - sweet though forbidden. I could
make a lake of the dusty bundles that held
everything in life for me - the dour wallpaper
always bulging at the seams, the kitchen
cupboards of pine without knots, the hurled
unbreakable plates on the floor. The street below
had just begun to heal. Strange to come away
from the lamplit, the knife grinders calling out,
deafening the empire. I loved the fireworks,
but I needed to be saved from myself. Cracks
demoralised our little house. Father surfaced again
when the fortune was lost, and mother rained
into every room, proudly hampering herself
while we ate a dark soup. Yes, in the past
everything is beautiful, like a twilight where
water would flow very slowly - the chastenings,
the bread, the pallor; the fires I started
so they could not see me cry. I played a game
called 'Wreck Everything', though I dressed
in silks and delicately nurtured thanks.
But now I'm frightened of another sort of ruin,
and the orioles nest someplace else

My Illusion of the Tycoon

1
Genitals once appeared in a letter he sent me,
and gray wool so that I might be seen in company
with him. He was elaborately courteous,
and stood alone like music. Even desire
includes a kind of mourning.

2
I struggled with my other lens, sometimes
aiming at the camera behind the eye.
The nakedness is always his. Each pointless
ornament is loved. He saw my pictures,
he walked at night, up the paved street,
into the arms of barren elms.

3
Long emulsions and tiny aperture.
The dressing-for-dinner, the exact stallions.
Warm enough for the modernist deckchairs,
and guests were seen moving among the statues,
where he had dreamed. It was jazz,
but very languid jazz, although he himself
danced with some abandon.

4
A shot I took, probably in October.
Man yearning over marble, and gradual alcohol.
The ferry and its schedule; the dog, huddling.
Sun on a straw hat next to the stair.
That day the youngish woman in the market.
The sea, rumpled by a wind and slow need.

5
The gesture, the expression, and of course
the magnificent devastation - these
are images of surrender we do not know.
He had admitted me into his room,
closing the moment when light elopes.
Dangerousness of the man, it is quite beautiful.

6
Screens, mirrors, artifice - I assemble him.
What haunts is the absence the eye collects.
The photograph accepts the dark truth.
His puzzling home, his imperfectly knotted tie,
and Chinese rain today at last.





Snow and Gold

So, on the heels of the army, our troupe moved.
I gave birth in the street and night nailed the great city to the earth.
I saw the plague stalking like a stranger whose language I could not understand.
My sores were dressed, my handkerchiefs hemmed.

It is one thing to listen to the heart and its murmurs.
A strange woman came to see me, saying that she was my lover's wife.
It was the twilight hour that is called the 'grey hour', when mourners become
lost and follow the wrong coffin.
We walked a little way together, and the talk burned like agate.

I know they say that one should speak well of the dead or not speak at all.
The winter came in one jump like the wolf.
An eye grew sightless because there were frightening scenes I did not wish to see.
I had talent for the noble virtues of blind faith even then.

An agile acrobat threw his plank across the ditch.
The wine now travelled from mouth to mouth.
The sentry's face clouded over, and he wept at the prompting of my fingers on the strings.
So the young men paid their precious francs.

The wagons pulled out to the east like a sunburst.
Of course I sang, like a log covered with ice.
We lived unbuttoned through the black country,
taking such great mouthfuls of bread, as though we were seagulls.

What was I besides the strength of my shadow?
I climbed up on the trains and tossed down coal.
The wind blew and merged with me, my childhood and my life, my passions and transgressions.
Even if they weren't gold, the trinkets glittered.

I often wonder how unpenitent people could live under a sky.
It was that kind of Tatyana I had come to be.
Let my father say as many harsh and stupid things as he likes,
but the skin of my hands was like fine snow.


Beloved Jug of Cream

It's cold: we must revise our dreams,
but abidingly and still perceptibly.
Oh I fell in love, and your father's mouth
made me sad, being utterly, sensing
and gripping, in prayer, but far,
far above. Suddenly, everything is different:
what was yellow is yellow, your eyes
of Silesia, pernickety, and speaking to me
in a way we've never spoken yet.
I'm quite certain, and I say this to you,
now, as an echo of that morning
when we walked among our senile teachers.
Which reminds me: do you like dogs,
or can't you? I infinitely prefer
the smallest hour, and the evenings,
when I always change into nice clothes.
But the good and the awkward slide
together, each night brings the universe,
such resemblances; I am too young
and you too imperilled, which causes
tears - hot, heavy tears. Soon it will be
August, the month we longed for
so much, and I can't help thinking
through the medium of other people's
words, as if they had been written
in freedom, sleeves rolled up, collar open.
You wore a lily in your buttonhole -
wasn't there a custom like that in olden times?
How I envied your sisters their place
on the sofa, the young beech forest
lit up by the sun. The finger I struck
on a needle yesterday is hurting.
Or is the answer really here inside us,
so long as we don't keep asking for more?
The blue vases are broken, thank you.
Only my soul disperses.


Rose Constructions

Sometimes my teacher
changes her conduct strangely,
pressing her heart
like dead leaves.
She sleeps in the chapel,
which is haunted.
Already the shadows
write in her diary.

She burns the letters
silently, reverently.
Like a bride,
she pushes away her plate.
She reads to me
like a will-o-the-wisp,
and I ask her
if there are bitter drops
in everyone's cup.

She says, "I respond
to the ploughing
of the fields,
whereas a man
grows fainter by a love."
All the things
we talk about
I sew into the seams.
She opens the window
and lets in the dark flowers.




A Patient Carpentry

quince tree, birds, light, snow, rains, everything.
Joseph Cornell

A ship that was mostly cobweb,
someone so astonishingly lean,
who had himself sold fabric
for a decade. A kind of voyager,
and his notes were full of
references to pigeons taking flight,
to theatres he would never step
inside, to moons. Just enough
body to keep a soul in. A gaze
like caged birds. His evenings
were uneventful, but he seemed
not to mind, prizing echoes
over truths, thimblefuls.
Winter was coming, and the house
was quiet, except for the rattling
of the radiator, and it would
just come over him sometimes
towards midnight: an image of her
sorting through his papers
and books, or moving about
on his enclosed porch,
as the planets orbited coldly


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