PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM 1
22nd February 1955 – 4th May 1955
Berne, Switzerland
Canto 1: Ghost Composer
this unseen structure written by a ghost sets up a red auditorium the little mouth in the womb sipping at scarlet sludge maggot-like fingers arching to grab at mother grabbing red-hot sheet music the cello spattered with pearl-white mucus has been abruptly bowed the fœtus hangs on that notation
listen to the submerged structure at its inception
the foetus is the notation a pearl of rancid perfume its still undifferentiated limbs already nailed down a moment ago squirming in the egg it has shaken the bell’s ring apart the music vomits branches saturated in sky-blue greasepaint
close your eyes and hear birdsong string up a dotted line green leaves tongues licking into the old age of bowstrings twisting wrinkled flowers stockpiled by ghosts like a dried scallop the cello echoes the ocean’s vast enormity pouring out emptiness once, pouring out the sobs a thousand times in flashback close your eyes semen dissolves the dark in the net’s tail, the silvery shoals flesh still flowing in the little ears flowing into thought the little ghost calm in wordless song, the world calm in lingering inside blood-red elements
this is May the wind is full of weeping an empty wooden chair before the classroom altar turns around waits for him to arrive
First Day
snow on the mountains melting in sunlight just slipped out of a tunnel too this little beast sleeps on its side
a weeping frenzy fills in the hollows on the bolster mycelium-fine hair damp and briny
paws shrunk in a coverlet of white mittens tremble faintly a tsunami picks up the sailor’s little cot
another hostage mortgaged to home and family snow on the mountains parallel to the masthead watchers he is added to endless weary human forms returning implies kissing the next ocean breakers
a photo stops the verdant pine wood outside the window the instant daybreak hits the shutter he falls in love with the dream in a dream that he isn’t there
shattered on a soft reef to have reached ignorance of black ignorance of white a bitter rosin fierce friction on tree-trunks remembered
Tenth Day
in the market snow’s brightness slaps your face too well-known as the car’s automatic door lock snicks softly shut his eyes are still firmly closed thirty years on
the keen chill whets life the sheaves of light golden milky-tasting far from symbolic by a nurse’s hand at the bedside held tight
the seal’s little nostrils rise from the whitecap coverlet geranium and lemon a seductive solution thirty years on though there’s doubt then with sewn-up eyelids’ hurt
sewing the tenth-day world onto what’s external light’s tenth pull on the trigger already an axiom he’s shot chasing the rifling of the barrel
whose nature lengthens unto death avalanche sky-fallen both feet pillowed on melt-water’s line of thought at the command of a geography milky-tasting and golden
double exposure in the mind leaps the car door and lands on suddenly-wakened acrid pellets of fruit-flesh hidden by light-speed among blind cobbles he blazes on
Mother’s Handwriting
her hand gently strokes after death still stroking each white deep-sea coral branch refracted through layer on layer of blue roiling
cold as carefully-chosen words the first letter written to her son in her own hand the seawater scours with its murmuring through images of a little face currents are glancing
with her scribbles page by page growing a drop of blood called love from the start each day into stickier grammar ripening
only against the tide of time can the son’s reply be delivered the son’s gaze changes the direction of reading reads up to illness when he can’t hold a word for shivering
her cut-off hands above the page her ocean hanging a single inch away the blue ink still more dazzling body heat curdles into a place the wind can’t blow down
coral lamp sets off a blood-woven twilight faintly lighting the moment of a poem in childbirth as all language responds to dying words clogged in a heart
First Month Fulfilled
into the round lip of the First Moon’s cup will pour so many moons now the child is lying quiet underwater becoming part of the far-off view of early morning
waking early little frog or swordfish opening the webs between its five fingers pupils gleam and wander to the window the aquarium’s bright beautiful glass
First Month clouds belly’s fish-scales shimmering bright the first Spring bends down and gives his cheeks a scratchy kiss birdsong’s colourful tail dragging the little cot along
still doesn’t know the past exists doesn’t know the bloody circulation plucking at his eyelashes an non-person’s daybreak each cell a boat wandering off its course
delivering the single passion of being dashed on the rocks this child’s good behaviour has exhausted the reticence of the future uprooting the clock’s second hand in brilliant sunshine
he has understood that the bitterest of tears must remain unspoken little dolphin in swaddling clothes, one year old in one day eyes full of amazement gently splashing into the whirlpool
Fifty Days
the ocean is like mother’s body detained elsewhere the only hand she has left cut off in the photo on her nightdress ripples of blue and green stripes
sleeves rolled all the way up a mild and kindly light embracing him a seashore overflowing with the scent of soap telling him that all his life he’ll rest his head on the sea-breeze’s shoulder
all his life sopping wet looking up from the washbasin at the tiny nakedness clambering up the wrapped-up umbilical cord a tiny stalk with the evanescent dialect of the water’s voice
chatting with mother her non-existence has cut off bleached when injected into her son brightly beautiful as the tracks of terns everywhere
even the sea will die too just as words have died then scoop him up skin sticky with dream journeys an exercise lost in the washbasin
pulling at a hand embedded in a tiny armpit that hand becomes ocean is also known in a son’s body weight lying down in mother’s fragments he endures this pleasure
Seventy Days - May 4th
the wild ducks have tucked lapis lazuli feathers in their bosoms voyaging on the little lake of his snow-white lapel bent into the eyebrows of an instant spilling out laughter
migrant birds are seduced by the magnet planted in their brain flight! the meaning that lies between two dates burns both hands makes the writing’s shape more graceful
grown into a cobblestone full of life in the little square jolting the pram and the curious sun leaning over it snowy mountains like smoke curling up from a cigarette
a farewell to being full of life bamboo grove drawing out the scent of rain blotting out a million miles he reflects the claustrophobia of the water’s sound first moment forged into ineluctable madness
the ducks’ emerald necks loll on their backs seashore’s axis twisted through 360 degrees sewn soft toys of his youth only the needle’s eye is left
his today so like a fake mollusk clouds have endlessly climbed the ridgeportents of living quack quack ducks’ orange tongues are still explaining
Peking Opera Lesson
peonies cluster round on their fine stamens stand pergola and patio her cheek transits over to him a dream half-white half-red his sweet tenderness becomes her springtime soprano is’t man? is’t ghost? an impossible beauty dallies with the world beyond dalliance approaching powder’s perfume shores up the aroma of flesh hip-swinging high buskins wade the riffling pool till it overflows he sings and she signs each drawn-out end-rhyme life is like theatre but not everyone puts on a brilliant show —says Father
Eastern Peace Market Fortuna Theatre Goldfish Lane all chasing the king’s concubine clouds want clothes flowers want faces history wants broken-down relics that follow after greasepaint is gone he and she amorous looks and sweet ogling fill in a blank storyline white silk sleeves have been rippling for a millennium who cares about dried-up names? the shot glass is filled up all unseen is knocked back all unseen the snapped neck hangs from the strap in a darkened private party pirouettes a true cut flower encountered this false coming of age —says Father
a world hidden in air materializes with the crane’s cries oh dynasties the crimson and the white are bliss indeed an aria forced from deep in the throat forces out Deep Time’s metamorphoses always the same story always this girl and this boy treading the margin of the stage as if it were the margin of time treading the knife-edge of the now oceans below the cliff recede she and he watch us from a great height only extreme elegance is allowed oh how golden shines art’s alembic it fills every silence in the ear —says Father