marilyn bowering: about your name

5.


If you wish to think about what is invisible,
you start with a loved one,


with their essence, with the touch of lips
in actuality or in potential: as beginning with


electrons and moving to electricity,
and the hydro electric dams on the rivers,


and the changes of names they undergo
according to politics -- that is, you ignore history.


As to the way things are -- this is intelligible
only through a vision of you.


Marvellous colours that are invisible except
to the naked eye, unseen by electronic pulses,


or by mirrors, or by angels talking and drawing
each other's pictures,


unseen by all except me, who happened to find you
in the right place and time.


Because when I look at you I seem to see nothing:
I see the sweetness and light that is above


and beyond all mirrors or the hair combing of angels,
or the polishings of motor cars and mountain bicycles:


it is greatest because it is the simplest, and because it is full
like the air, of the intention to touch.


For that which is most actual is you when I see you
and when I am with you.


You ask how this came about:
it is a question of grace, not practice,


a step in the right direction by chance, 
a desire, not thought.


And I meditated on the mind's ascent to love
the whole world before me, and all the roads,


and I waited for you.


Bowering, Marilyn. "About Your Name" Introductions: Poets Present Poets. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 2001.

anne carson: blended text

(from Sublimes)

You have captured:                     pinned upon

my heart:                                  the wall of my heart is your love

with one glance:                         as one

with one bead:                           as an exile of the kings of royalty

of your eyes:                              my heart

you have something of mine:         a torn thing

again the moon:                          now

the rule:                                    (who knows)


Carson, Anne. "Blended Text" Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera. Toronto: Vintage Books, 2005.

anne carson: and reason remains undaunted

(from Sublimes)


Searching for things sublime I walked up into the muddy windy big hills

behind the town where trees riot according to their own laws and

one may

observe so many methods of moving green—under, over, around, across,

up the back, higher, fanning, condensing, rifled, flat in the eyes, as if

pacing a

cell, like a litter of grand objects, minutely, absorbed, one leaf at a time,

ocean-furious, nettle-streaked, roping along, unmowed, fresh out of pools,

clear as Babel,

such a tower, scattered through the heart, green in the strong sense, dart-

shook, crownly, carrying the secrets of its own heightening on

up, juster than a shot, gloomier than Milton or even his king of terrors,

idol in its dark parts, as a word coined to mean “storm” (of love) or

“waving lines”

(architectural), scorned, clean, with blazing nostrils, not a servant, not

rapid, rapid.

Carson, Anne. "And Reason remains Undaunted" Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2005.

anne carson: book of isaiah (part II)

II.

There is a kind of pressure in humans to take whatever is most beloved by them

and smash it.

Religion calls the pressure piety and the smashed thing a sacrifice to God.

Prophets question these names.   

What is an idol?

An idol is a useless sacrifice, said Isaiah.

But how do you know which ones are useless? asked the nation in its genius.

Isaiah pondered the various ways he could answer this.

Immense chunks of natural reality fell out of a blue sky

       and showers of light upon his mind.

Isaiah chose the way of metaphor.

Our life is a camera obscura, said Isaiah, do you know what that is?   

Never heard of it, said the nation.   

Imagine yourself in a darkened room, Isaiah instructed.

Okay, said the nation.

The doors are closed, there is a pinhole in the back wall.

A pinhole, the nation repeated.

Light shoots through the pinhole and strikes the opposite wall.   

The nation was watching Isaiah, bored and fascinated at once.

You can hold up anything you like in front of that pinhole, said Isaiah,

and worship it on the opposite wall.

Why worship an image? asked the nation.   

Exactly, said Isaiah.

The nation chewed on that for a moment.   

Then its genius spoke up.

So what about Isaiah’s pinhole?

Ah, said Isaiah.

A memory fell through him as clear heat falls on herbs.

Isaiah remembered the old days, conversing with God under the Branch

and like an old butler waking in an abandoned house the day the revolution began,

Isaiah bent his head.

A burden was upon Isaiah.

Isaiah opened his mouth.

A sigh came from Isaiah’s mouth, the sigh grew into a howl.

The howl ran along the brooks to the mouth of the brooks   

and tore the nets of the fishers who cast angle into the brooks   

and confounded the workers in fine flax who weave networks   

and broke their purpose.

The howl rolled like a rolling thing past slain men and harvests and spoils

and stopped in a ditch between two walls.

Then Isaiah unclamped his mouth from the howl.

Isaiah let his mouth go from the teat.

Isaiah turned, Isaiah walked away.

Isaiah walked for three years naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered

to the shame of the nation.

All night you could see the Branch roaming against the sky like a soul.

Carson, Anne. "Book of Isaiah" Glass, Irony and God. New York: New Directions Books, 1995.

anne carson: book of isaiah (part I)

I.


Isaiah awoke angry.

Lapping at Isaiah’s ears black birdsong no it was anger.   

God had filled Isaiah’s ears with stingers.

Once God and Isaiah were friends.

God and Isaiah used to converse nightly, Isaiah would rush into the garden.

They conversed under the Branch, night streamed down.

From the sole of the foot to the head God would make Isaiah ring.   

Isaiah had loved God and now his love was turned to pain.   

Isaiah wanted a name for the pain, he called it sin.

Now Isaiah was a man who believed he was a nation.

Isaiah called the nation Judah and the sin Judah’s condition.   

Inside Isaiah God saw the worldsheet burning.

Isaiah and God saw things differently, I can only tell you their actions.

Isaiah addressed the nation.   

Man’s brittleness! cried Isaiah.

The nation stirred in its husk and slept again.

Two slabs of bloody meat lay folded on its eyes like wings.   

Like a hard glossy painting the nation slept.

Who can invent a new fear?

Yet I have invented sin, thought Isaiah, running his hand over the knobs.

And then, because of a great attraction between them—

which Isaiah fought (for and against) for the rest of his life—

God shattered Isaiah’s indifference.

God washed Isaiah’s hair in fire.

God took the stay.

From beneath its meat wings the nation listened.   

You, said Isaiah.

No answer.

I cannot hear you, Isaiah spoke again under the Branch.   

Light bleached open the night camera.

God arrived.

God smashed Isaiah like glass through every socket of his nation.   

Liar! said God.

Isaiah put his hands on his coat, he put his hand on his face.

Isaiah is a small man, said Isaiah, but no liar.

God paused.

And so that was their contract.   

Brittle on both sides, no lying.

Isaiah’s wife came to the doorway, the doorposts had moved.   

What’s that sound? said Isaiah’s wife.   

The fear of the Lord, said Isaiah.   

He grinned in the dark, she went back inside.

Carson, Anne. "Book of Isaiah" Glass, Irony and God. New York: New Directions Books, 1995.