two poems from the sequence "scroll"

the perfection of beauty?

however her breath subtends. ante-early enough to go
skin crazy. she considers. the burnt wood in nell's hands
preparing strokes. browsing the neck's resistance
lena rubs warm rose oil into her palms. fragrance
diffractive. moonlight filters through the weathered
wooden blinds. contemplatively towards the temple. out
towards warnings. green on the balcony. (an empty chair)
dark stillness where secrets flow. in her hands nell hears
summer duties

                     his lips were ashen and gray

and anticipates returning to storms. shaking modalities
eleven times lena's wrists press down towards nell's
departure. her perilopings. without a break but in writing

                                                  yearnings slip down
her throat like organic yoghurt. for far. deep propagations
triggering doubles in nell's reluctance. the pull
in absorbance of the push. as in these words. ground
styles. electrical hum. their motions migrate as slowly
and rapidly as their debrided habits

                   but these burns were ash-colored

and lena squeezes. hulls the hesitation from nell's hands
compresses each fingertip <Der Irak erlebt einen neuen
Krieg> <Weitere Terrorverdächtiger in Spanien
festgenommen> what entered the picture. meeting of
irises and epiderelictions. slow stroke over a shoulder
and into a backscape <Rwanda gedenkt der Opfer
des Völkermords von 1994> anteceding movements of
no straight repetition. lena follows nell. jointly as loosely as
without lifting she weighs. arguments under a surface
joy endings. keeper of nell's withdrawn antennae
seek sparingly and frayed

     hanging down from both arms and legs like rags
                       was gray-colored skin

an ellipsis still to do. anterior monotones no
awareness. they talk and torque. laying skinship. that way
lena waits for the counterwaves. to their

                                                           diaphragms and
lena's hand placed in shadow. myofunctional clearly
large enough for marvels. what happened. what still
might happen. now peppermint salve. lena stretching
the weariness in nell's left ankle cracks. what still might
happen. opening the arches of her temporal sanctuary

                     as if he had gray leprosy

nell receives her ghosts. her skin soaks up the moonlight
like her paper will adsorb the madness. bubbling in
her measured edges. perhaps lena lights candles
before quietly kneading a knot and diligently gliding
her weathered hands over the dilated structures

fragile directions. the failure of nell's questions. questions
lena cannot hear

                       their tarnished arrangement. agitated
symbols. progression of the theme exacted. rather
scoped. so she will practice a scattering hand across
the curving

                           stained grayer

myosotizes nell. potential dwelling in her thighs. scene
complications. her derivations still doing
somewhen translatable as abstract flexibility. without
fading within. transinuates nell. stills down the night
those violaceous moments enveloping concepts after
a blue storm. second fostered procedure. underscoring
music. an opened box. irony and ebony. it introduces
voices from nell's low astonishment.
        "lena do you know still?"
        "what parallels slightly?"
        "can a squeezed ellipse actually collect time's
               wrinkles?"

                       an ash-colored flock

                                    O

with milk lead lenses hot-water bottle and figs      she
changes out scratches      (care trap      shy-hinged
      x-gracefully in a friction      dearer than any orthodox
fiction     anti-dazzle no matter the price of passion and
perfection)      <To pinch and scrape is to squander life
itself> <Know where to stop and you will not be
in danger>      antique grounds for each choice      yesterday
tensed      almost returned to this      an unsweetened
line     or a sacral prudence      zone of boiled
quiet     treated in what light?     antinote long but for
conditions another among the draughters

Notes

Citations centered and in italics from Ota Yoko: City of Corpses; in Richard H. Minear (ed. and trans.): Hiroshima: Three Witnesses. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 158, 188, 189, 190, 216, 232

<Der Irak erlebt . . .> Basler Zeitung, Donnerstag, 8. April 2004 Nr. 84, S. 1

<Weitere Terrorverdächtigen in> <Rwanda gedenkt der . . .> Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Donnerstag, 8. April 2004, S. 1

<To pinch and . . .> <Know where to . . .> From chapter 44 of the Daodejing, cited in Heinz Götze (ed.): Chinese and Japanese Calligraphy: Spanning Two Thousand Years. The Heinz Götze Collection Heidelberg. Munich, Prestel, 1989, p. 184

même si le sage prétend connaître

zones of a softer time neither day nor night. double
bondable. still shout. of fugal blossoming. openings
beside the stone. but a description needs a limit
in the unfinishable sense of a cultivated
intensity. access and accession. silence in that
in the unguarded. yellow as recalled. it has curious
this way. addressed beside the scenes. gathering
a distance fallen on the ground <And only her
red shadow stains the unrembering stone> order
to gradually. yleno extends lacinated lines over
whiles

                  about tides in her heart. can still this?
abandoned temperament. properly to spirals

                                                   their
difficult passage through the boundaries
of cultivation

the surroundings work a vastness. because
they have inconsistently. their light fractions
and declensions leading and floating. with which
they share. presumably something. deep grey
paling to almost white around the stamens
and anthers <This place falls away from its time>

suffused throughout with a hint of violet. down
rising. because a willingness alternates with a
wilful informality. a memory of uncut whys

                                work
mobile. commencerative. assume a worning
moment. blouse from a french market. and then
what she heard took all parts of herself. tangent
to the list. antiness. musk scent it folds. fugitive
with a lemon tang

                                at surfaces of reception

                                         againness. they share
their restraints. seven sounds seven stones
three times seven valencies. tangent to the lost
varieties of moment. in the unexpectable
where the possible settles deeper in the ground
like a dark paleness. commentative. hips that will
absorb the light of reason. a strength in
the unmoded. agrophobic to the marrow. a memory
of ungathered ryes. widows and the
unchilded sieving sky. contact reds

                                                    some dark
environmental resistance. ropes and scopes
looped in the minding <that vine whose pods
are the animal wombs in time>

begin from far away. terribly out

        saturday 7th of tamuz 5764. remoter than
an echo of beaten gold. out of not only
her graphgear and gauloises. steric facilities of
a suggestion. because it might teach what it cannot
reach

tangent to the lest. the not easy. nascent
overturnings. shaded faculties of a suggestion
present these properties. in the unseemed. world
of survivors and denatured surfaces. yleno
cleaning her windows while nell collects bulrushes
and metallic foils <Across the years each sentence
goes>

a sendless. in the untauterlogical. world of recipes
and denaturalized recipients. child time

        me as
                as after

        after poems have stripped off
        speech and paper butterflies
        a sky soaked in bleach
        dries on a line of practice

in the unsaturatable strung from death to decay
quite ignored forms of growth and articulation. she
peppermints putti from the baroque. night insects
throw away their wings here. under their feet
the vectors of being achieve a decision <This

is the place>

                                 O

tangent to the last implication     the emergenced
today     nightfluster     meaning a leaving site
with its paradoxologies     white ravens     because it
describes many days thought in a causal procedure
as dynamic as the climate

provisionally getting after     tangent to the last
impact     the emergenced today     meaning
a leaking site with its cantographies     think it
all     her of hinges     meaning a leading site
with hylothetically even a trace of lavender shows
<Der Zugang zu den intuitiven Erkenntnissen
erfordert ein Herz aus Feuer und einen Verstand
aus Eis>

Notes

<And only her . . .> Edith Sitwell: Three Poems of the Atomic Age. III. The Canticle of the Rose; in: The Song of the Cold. New York, Vanguard, 1948, p. 20

<The place falls . . .> Robert Duncan: Structure of Rime XVII; in: Roots and Branches. New York, New Directions, 1969 [first published 1964], p. 66

<that vine whose . . .> Robert Duncan: Narrative Bridges for Adam's Way; in: Bending the Bow. New York, New Directions, 1986, p. 103

<Across the years . . .> Robert Duncan: Crosses of Harmony and Disharmony; in: The Opening of the Field. New York, New Directions, 1973 [first published 1960], p. 44

< This . . .> Robert Duncan: The Structure of Rime XIII, ibid., p. 83