If this is but a study of the appearance of things or the way consciousness has structured the experience of things, then this is the room in which a locket has gone missing. This is a pillowcase into which the thieves stuffed silver and small electronics before climbing out of the window and into the rain. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep while they rifled one last time through the drawers. That was long ago, but when it comes back it still feels real. Moonlight passes through the blinds, touching as if it could take. I watch the windows while you sleep.
Life Cycle of White
Ivory, ecru, massed petals on three heads of hydrangea. After three days, each begins to sport a light ochre outline. We know what it means: everything goes into decline. Yesterday, a communion. Today, a wedding. Tomorrow, blooms falling like snow into the open earth.
Snowman
A cold day. Up, and to the Office, where all the morning alone at the Office, nobody meeting, being the eve of Christmas. At noon home to dinner, and then to the Office busy, all the afternoon, and at night home to supper, and it being now very cold, and in hopes of a frost, I begin this night to put on a waistcoat, it being the first winter in my whole memory that ever I staid till this day before I did so. So to bed in mighty good humour with my wife, but sad, in one thing, and that is for my poor eyes.
cold body of night
cold hopes of a frost
the winter in my eyes
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 December 1668.
Nature Doesn’t Choose; It’s Just Nature
Everyone is counting on their fingers, holding their breath, waiting for the next creature to come out of the sky to devour them. Corpses kneel on the ground, praying to remember the last thing they ate or saw or heard before boarding the ferry. Clouds bearing promises of snow prowl overhead. Sometimes they are selfish, other times just careless. Who said Life is a dream? Close your eyes, but keep your radar tuned to voices in the ether, or the odor of rosemary and cypress. A man fumbled for hours in the woods, arms outstretched, following the voice of an owl.
Stenographer to the powerful
Met at the Office all the morning, and at noon to the ’Change, and there met with Langford and Mr. Franke, the landlord of my father’s house in Fleet Streete, and are come to an arbitration what my father shall give him to be freed of his lease and building the house again. Walked up and down the ’Change, and discoursed with Sir John Bankes, who thinks this prorogation will please all but the Parliament itself, which will, if ever they meet, be vexed at Buckingham, who yet governs all. He says the Nonconformists are glad of it, and, he believes, will get the upperhand in a little time, for the King must trust to them or nobody; and he thinks the King will be forced to it. He says that Sir D. Gawden is mightily troubled at Pen’s being put upon him, by the Duke of York, and that he believes he will get clear of it, which, though it will trouble me to have Pen still at the Office, yet I shall think D. Gawden do well in it, and what I would advise him to, because I love him. So home to dinner, and then with my wife alone abroad, with our new horses, the beautifullest almost that ever I saw, and the first time they ever carried her, and me but once; but we are mighty proud of them. To her tailor’s, and so to the ’Change, and laid out three or four pounds in lace, for her and me; and so home, and there I up to my Lord Brouncker, at his lodgings, and sat with him an hour, on purpose to talk over the wretched state of this Office at present, according to the present hands it is made up of; wherein he do fully concur with me, and that it is our part not only to prepare for defending it and ourselves, against the consequences of it, but to take the best ways we can, to make it known to the Duke of York; for, till Sir J. Minnes be removed, and a sufficient man brought into W. Pen’s place, when he is gone, it is impossible for this Office ever to support itself. So home, and to supper and to bed.
he who will conform
will get bled
will get clear ink
I would advise him to love
the beautifulest hands
not the pen
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 23 December 1668.
Living Inside the Poem
No one told me what a poem really was until I heard a woman say in an interview: We are all living inside a poem. I thought then of the poem of my early morning: the tiny bit of salt sprinkled on an egg as it fried in the pan after I broke the white- walled fortress where it kept a little sun captive. And I thought of the poem of midday, a window straining to open after months of being shut, but whose wooden frame now shrinks from the cold. The poem of the world inside the radio crackled with news of ice storms, and people on the road huddled together all night researching every pocket of warmth to be found. In another poem, a man was bringing his wife home from the hospital. Fish in ponds looked up every now and then at the frozen ceiling, before moving back into their blue- speckled rooms.
Shrink/age
At the office all the morning, and at noon to the ’Change, thinking to meet with Langford about my father’s house in Fleet Streete, but I come too late, and so home to dinner, and all the afternoon at the office busy, and at night home to supper and talk, and with mighty content with my wife, and so to bed.
o morning
change me
with my father’s house
come home
to a tent
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 22 December 1668.
Varieties of Reflected Light
Moonlight fades but the driveway glows even whiter. The underside of a discarded surgical mask, under a drift of pine needles. Red throated, yellow-billed, white-banded: each loon's lonely cry. Startled Odocoileus virginianus: the fawn's small pennant, its mother's indignant flag. Creamy hydrangea petals, as though outlined by non-photo blue pencil.In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Doppelgänger
My own coach carrying me and my boy Tom, who goes with me in the room of W. Hewer, who could not, and I dare not go alone, to the Temple, and there set me down, the first time my fine horses ever carried me, and I am mighty proud of them, and there took a hackney and to White Hall, where a Committee of Tangier, but little to do, and so away home, calling at the Exchange and buying several little things, and so home, and there dined with my wife and people and then she, and W. Hewer, and I by appointment out with our coach, but the old horses, not daring yet to use the others too much, but only to enter them, and to the Temple, there to call Talbot Pepys, and took him up, and first went into Holborne, and there saw the woman that is to be seen with a beard. She is a little plain woman, a Dane: her name, Ursula Dyan; about forty years old; her voice like a little girl’s; with a beard as much as any man I ever saw, black almost, and grizly; they offered to shew my wife further satisfaction if she desired it, refusing it to men that desired it there, but there is no doubt but by her voice she is a woman; it begun to grow at about seven years old, and was shaved not above seven months ago, and is now so big as any man’s almost that ever I saw; I say, bushy and thick. It was a strange sight to me, I confess, and what pleased me mightily. Thence to the Duke’s playhouse, and saw “Macbeth.” The King and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemayne, and close to the woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. And my wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me but it vexed me to see Moll Davis, in the box over the King’s and my Lady Castlemayne’s head, look down upon the King, and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemayne once, to see who it was; but when she saw her, she looked like fire; which troubled me. The play done, took leave of Talbot, who goes into the country this Christmas, and so we home, and there I to work at the office late, and so home to supper and to bed.
who goes with me
whoever I am
born with a beard
like a red bush
thick as gossip
and a smile
like fire on Christmas
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 21 December 1668.
Another poem with the same admonition from Lorca
I know, Federico, I know— Do not carry your remembrance. But that's what pockets are for, and I own many articles of clothing with pockets. It's like how salt goes with pepper, coffee with a little milk; ginger in a bowl of broth. Not only do I have to ask myself Where were you and what were you doing this same time another year? I also have to ask What did your heart feel? And once we start down that road, Federico, there's no telling what other kinds of remembrance we'll find. This isn't about wallet-sized photographs with inscriptions on the back. Rememorari: to recall, to bring again that thing which has always existed in the memory. How you were pushed or how the ground felt against your back. How a sudden downpour saved you.