Split sonnet
"I, I, I - first person singular"
(Mercer/Resnais, Providence)
Woke in the early morning, many thoughts:
of Marina, whom I love more than torpid life -
unfortunately, there's a contradiction
there, since I can only have her while there's
life.
I, eye, ear, ere, with a why and a sigh
dying into the featureless horizon.
What I am hanging on to is a thread
in the labyrinth, a twisting frame
that brings me to the hollow heart again,
sucking the vacuum in like manna.
Take it like a man, giving it all away
when the bell rings on the empty street-car
screeching like a bullet down the vapid
avenues
of self. This is the true trajectory:
I billows with the wind and lets it go.
6/11/2012
© Martin J. Walker
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I would like to add the following forwarded by Martin J. Walker:
ReplyDeleteMy diary entry for November 2nd reads:
Allerseelen - "Ein Tag im Jahr ist ja den Toten frei" --- Jean Cocteau's diary on this solemn day in 1951 read: "Theater. A gentleman is pointing out the celebrities in the house to his neighbor. 'Look! There's Jean Marais! And there's Danielle Darrieux! And there's X., and there's Y! And you see the gentleman with the white hair - that's Paul Valéry.' 'But Paul Valéry's dead!' 'Dead? Look...he's moving.'
Quotation taken from The Assassin's Cloak, Past Tense by Cocteau, tr. R.Howard.
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