after Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia
In sleep he is sent
to a memory that nears
its incarnation.
He can see his silhouette
in the distance,
it walks a dusk horizon
that curves like the top
of a molecule.
His real life earns
a passing mention
in a lengthy deposition
under hypnosis.
*
In the caverns of the baths,
in his clothes and shoes
Gorchakov walks through water;
there is all the difference in the world
between here and home
and as he wades
he smokes a cigarette.
Gorchakov is in danger.
He can be both
inhaled and blown away.
Rather than a reflection,
on a mirror he is condensation.
Sometimes he is just
the breath of a dog.
This poet is a photograph.
When the emulsion
of his thin silver present
is exposed to light, it channels
an old instinct’s pictures.
His country has formed crystals.
*
At nineteen I was a receptionist
at a photographic college.
One of the students
was a man from the mines. He said
Where do accents come from?
And I said something about
kinds of English sounds breeding along a line
– an auditory line of whomever ended
up in Australia, for instance.
In-bred voice noise.
And he said, But at first?
What is an accent in its own place?
It must be something in the rocks.
*
All the water in this film
is actually voice
that has decomposed.
In Gorchakov’s head,
in moving countries he
has started a precipitation.
Think how Domenico’s house leaks
even when it is not raining –
somehow, sonar has bled.
Gorchakov’s old memory is animated
and it transitions through states.
A liquid distilled from his country
is in his blood.
*
At the moment of heart attack,
it is the gas of this country
that drifts from his mouth.
As the poet becomes unconscious
a stratum is formed
and in this layer
memory is a demon that walks
like a soldier from a tunnel.