The Lady Stays, The Lady Stays
“I haven’t read Marbot since college –”
“You haven’t read who?”
“The recently rediscovered critic whose theories predated Freud –
– whose life predated Freud.”
“Wine or gin with your chicken?”
“You know he isn’t real?”
“Oh.”
“Regionalism is always real.”
“Martin, shall we sit inside?”
“Television will destroy regionalism.”
“I’m packing up.”
“Klee was regional.”
“Are you coming?”
“Did you know why Klee was denied citizenship in Switzerland? One of the committee members said he had painted a picture of a very small field with a great many cows in it and foreigners would say the Swiss don’t have enough pasturage for that many cattle.”
He turns to her, sees she has packed and moved away. He gets up slowly and follows. Will she be inside? He isn’t sure.
•
The schools, the forms, the words, all fade,
the wrist of meaning turns,
and stars which from the fingertips
once leapt, have ceased to burn.
To analyze and then to claim,
insist your words are those that win,
but on the instant all agree,
to know the mystery flown.
The lover who stakes his claim with every breath
will taste the salt of bitterest death,
she was here,
here,
once she was here.
Oh moon, star, foam of the rising wind,
porch of the last stair,
gate of the last road,
where is there emptiness to touch
the emptiness of where she’s been,
the emptiness of where she’s been?
Sing to him now,
ease the impact on his heart,
for he once caught the breath of truth,
for he once held the name of truth,
and lost it — to perfection of the fact.
Music presses past that gate where mathematics stay,
and concepts can be only pause
for art’s more tangled way.
The palace of the lover king is not on any road or page.
the lady has already come and gone.
The lady stays, the lady stays.