A Vanity

Keith Waldrop

The notion of elsewhere was beyond her.

—Johanna Drucker, Otherspace

The world i see—there—here—is the world I remember. What is to come is behind me. As I look back …

lute, skull, globe, hour-

glass, and

[end of

year]

clutter

books, music, instruments of

war, astronomy, elements

of the liturgy

viol with a broken

[this century, as

past as any]

string, sextant, compasses, candle

the candle

forest

church in

ruins, the churchyard

extinguished

pillar of

fire

I have a terrible habit of remembering the death of people who are still alive, killing them off by an act of memory.

False memory, I suppose I should call it, but sometimes a person whose death I remember is in fact dead and my memorial in that case seems no different in character.

Until, by some chance or other, I discover that one I have killed still lives. Perhaps he phones me.

Or I run into her on my way somewhere.

Or I find an obituary:

someone I killed long ago is now dead.

pushed

particular

attached to

the body, a counter-

series

soul of the

skeleton, lower

brain, sea-horse and

almond

you who follow me are not

my children

Rain beats at the window, while from the other side precise daylight, gray under a comprehensive cloud but brighter than I would have expected for such a gray day, filters through.

But no, this I beheld with eyes closed and, I suspect, before waking had broken my sleep’s regular rhythm.

I saw it—think, or thought, I saw it—in a dream.

The day, awake, is not at all like that.

unhandled, cannot

be imagined, hypothetical

suicide

… can turn up at any moment

a place in the

lattice, noonday on

earth or

beneath earth

gloomy boundary, world

or not world

musk mingled

with orchids, countless

stars in ruin

battle to the

death, settling nothing but

place of burial

I see, so often, glanced in a mirror, the door just going shut.

(Negative.)

(North, vague image of Jealousy.)

Color reversal.

agility

clarity

subtlety

[dowries]

impassibility

had not occurred to her that he …

strange behavior, accomplished

this

dragonfly groups, force-

sensitive organs

exhibition

block and ax

pillar of

cloud

who said?: Thought will not go far in a negative direction, so things are always worse than we think.

up-and-down

scarcely able to

speak for weeping, heavy

grasp on my arm

machine, universal

gates of torment, mimic

[lost to this world]

mourned as dead, forgotten

dying

can scarcely weep, for

talking

down, up

a noise which I could call

shouting

pillar of

salt

… into

out of which …

strange beauty

trees

caught in the hearsay