no ideas but in wounds, I is that wound
with its slight aura, archival glamour, gaslit corridors,
its famous sunsets that day-glo on water
the storied rays travel
to consider wounds that grow through life, illuminate,
and expand into a primal struggle
to be able to say, I was here
an everyday annunciation the wound lifts from sorrow,
and it grows, taking years to love
a wound in all its glory
days go on watching clouds change into the mirror
of the world, which is my face
which is a threshold, a name, a proving ground,
an education in wounds
I can’t explain it, I know it’s true, like when a dove
becomes a scarf
this is what it feels like to come
the skyline bent in the window, autumnal consonants,
a musical light, it was good
the imagination fanlike shadows the garden reflecting
the primitive
a scent of camphor
Photographs of Campbell Park by Wouter Van de Voorde, from his book Death is not here, which was published in November by Void © The artist
days go on broadly scattered and move from a state
of unknowing
to a condition of the unknown
consider the wound with its canonical doubt, call stories
and testimony
indexical zeal for origins and etymologies
wund, wuntho, wunda, und
the mother opens every wound, the wound opens
every word
the asymmetries of a body in the act of elegy, ungainly
in its pilgrimage
trauma in the genes
a cellular memory of torn events
walking beneath a shadow of warplanes, shadows falling
on the wild flowers and timothy grass
days with their loud repetitive phrasing spiraling down
the scale, carry and echo
their uneven sky of development
and the magnificence of a backward glance, proud trees
and hillocks, proud lakes
the privileged nostalgia of that
or the podium in dead air and the sound of power, dead
air in which we wait for the candidates to enter
the sound of dead air and the dead metallurgical sound
of power
a static gunpowder sting folding space
to feel the wrought-iron columns and buttresses rising
in the boy
welding the triumphal history of the industrial dawn
to the soft tissue of the body
a full bleed
who replaced my child with this ledger, this ledger
with a screed
the heart in the adult measures five inches in length,
three inches in width
the average weight varies from ten to twelve ounces
days go on, warbled notes, a jumble of fussing
even the first hours of agony are still new, ancient
wounds trickle fresh blood
will I still be standing, when nothing is more than
enough?
to be nowhere
I could live there, far from myself, along with the crescent,
free to shimmer
and outlive my sorrow
consider its eerie call and every shape of pain
wounds of the field, how they grow, they toil not,
neither do they spin
consider the flesh, its tendentious commentary,
its kin rituals
its shrill monotony like a sewing machine, days with
their glottal rattle and high trill
what was it you wanted? were you talking to me?
days whistle and tweet their spackled feelings
wounds that neither sow nor reap yet the air feeds them
if a wound could speak, what would it say?
the ride is a dream?
windmills and war and children, sleep and waking,
the grifting of time flies through everything
for every wound belonging to me as good belongs to you
days go on, a harsh croak, a low quacking
consider the wound, to refuse closure, to not let go,
to lose myself
in a majesty
tears soften the heart, welcome them into the theater,
let the salt run down my face
it may be the last thing I see
days with their systems, the mirror staged
days gone into a heady blossom of joy and sorrow,
a complex ecology
a necessary weather of becoming
the world woke me at 6 am, outside a field, a hollow
and an oak, the morning star above
the wound woke me with its light, hold on to the last
things I see and can’t explain, to know its truth
to have felt this as a boy
soloing inside, worrying the syntax between wound
and wounding, a carnal dance
alive in a dark theater, what I can say
retreats back into a wound wrung out into abstraction,
blah
I want new vistas, viscera, want earth in my mouth,
a collective breath, sweet noise of becoming
a kind of testimony
a disordered proof, a part of sex, more than sex, it was
time, the nature of time, I sensed happening
that death is happening
all that was left is where I am now
