Fin Amor
Peter Gizzi
Usage is more powerful than reason.
—Castiglione
Château If
If love if then if now if fleur de if the conditional if of arrows the condition of if
if to say light to inhabit light if to speak if to live, so
if to say it is you if love is if your form is if your waist that pictures the fluted stem if lavender
if in this field
if I were to say hummingbird it might behave as an adjective here
if not if the heart’s a flutter if nerves map a city if a city on fire
if I say myself am I saying myself (if in this instant) as if the object of your gaze if in a sentence about love you might write if one day if you would, so
if to say myself if in this instance if to speak as another—
if only to render if in time and accept if to live now as if disembodied from the actual handwritten letters m-y-s-e-l-f
if a creature if what you say if only to embroider—a city that overtakes the city I write
if in Provence.
Something in Blue
Blue everywhere in the sounds we make dissolves, a breeze failing to reach you.
A failed history unaware that the ground is also a factor.
Arbitrary the form of things at times. Do you ever think why ocean in the eyes? The blue of Ophelia’s portrait.
It’s easy to read but it’s also easy to read (thinking that) and the detail is caught in an iris fleck. Blue.
Felt sheets of sound die in distance—a music failing to teach you another language—the pupa crackles as it enters a world. All those champions,
dressed up in a hero’s skirt, a long cape with stars on their boots meant nothing then, not the least kerpow.
Pure noise—silent particle-wave—a hole in space enters the room, an iris opening to record the darkness.
This is a blue unlike any other.
The waves tumble sheets, a blue wash touches everything.
Inside us an ocean, a seashell of sound in the ear, kisses are like that—blue, outside, on a stare.
Just a Little Green Untitled
An oblique memory informed my animal;
traversing life with nothing to hold fast,
I move through groundcover
knowing it is important to sing.
This was my story. To understand
the serrated leaves hold a partial answer.
To understand there is a green unpronounceable.
Small things in shadow move
with a purpose. Do you ever say
runner, or buttons? These starts
out of the shallows in dusk.
I appeared at the edge of a great circle—
lines if seen with the proper instrument.
If seen at all, do we begin again in chairs,
rooms where people are? The field extends
a window, trees come to meet it.
That moment in the solo.
Instances when one came to sing,
the motor of the voice box, to see it,
to see the mouth open to take air.
The notes weeping, even willow,
insistent willow.
Noise surfaces at a circumference—
that sudden rush of air, a small tick
smaller tsk tsk, a timely emphasis
on prayer, voice, a body.
To say light on the bridge meant nothing then
not the least shining.
I want April to sleep in, dreaming
with the regularity of numbers,
silent equations turning, bits
of fractions, without need to reckon.
Mostly we count in the direction
of the ray. A shame not to notice
the length of a dream. Do you ever
say helix or fairy dust, just a little green?
Color of my true love’s hair.
Plain Song
Some say a baby cries for the life to come
some say leaves are green ’cause it looks good against
the blue
some say the grasses blow because it is earth’s instrument
some say we were born to cry
*
Some say that the sun comes close every year because it wants to be near us
some say the waters rise to meet it
others say the moon is our mother, ma mére
*
Some say birds overhead are a calligraphy: every child learning the words “home”
some say that the land and the language are the father
some say the land is not ours
some say in time we’ll rise to meet it
*
Some say there are the rushes the geese the tributaries and the reeds
*
Some say the song of the dove is an emblem of thought
some say lightning and some the electric light some say they are brothers
*
Some say the current in the wall is the ground
some say the nervous system does not stop with the body
some say the body does not stop
*
Some say beauty is only how you look at it and some beauty is what we have some say there is no beauty some truth
*
Some say the ground is stable
others the earth is round
for some it is a stone
I say the earth is porous and we fall constantly
*
Some say light rings some say that light is a wave some say it has a weight or there is a heft to it
*
Some say all of these things and some say not
some say the way of the beekeeper is not their way
some say the way of the beekeeper is the only way
some say simple things all there are are simple things
*
Some say “the good way,” some stuff
some say yes we need a form
some say form is a simple thing some say yes the sky is
a form of what is simple
*
Some say molecular some open others porous some blue
some say love some light some say the dark some heaven
Local Forecast
The whole thing is a lie, often
helpless. Hapless? No common error.
Paradox asks so much from us
we often experience it as grace.
Just in time, shaking at the lip
of a doorway, heavy sleet falling down.
I remember, in the coo of shade
my body, something from 20.
In early times the storyteller spoke
of a wheel falling across the heavens.
We depend on early sun, clement
weather, afterward come storms.
In a notebook the relative timidity
of observation can be brutal.
“Out of the rain I found you walking
out of a storm you rescued me.”