| Jacket 39 — Early 2010 | Jacket 39 Contents page | Jacket Homepage | Search Jacket |
This piece is about 13 printed pages long.
It is copyright © Douglas Barbour
and Jacket magazine 2009. See our [»»] Copyright notice.
The Internet address of this page is http://jacketmagazine.com/39/barbour-11poems.shtml
Back to the Douglas Barbour feature Contents list
Untitled (“civilization… ”)
civilization has its version of
primal scattering languages
riddle via metaphor
linguistic chaos
Pandora’s box
A lunatic tower
broken
like Tantalus
lost all
of myth
The history of
illuminati
is itself compelling
turgid
baroque torsions
focussed
the metaphoric
touch
emblematic
Babel
will feel
celestial motion
amazed
estrangement from
language
deeps of
debate
shallower ground
(homolinguistic translation:
George Steiner’s After Babel
[pp 57–58: words where they appeared
on the original page])
Untitled (“It is not past”)
It is not past
It is
Images past
imprinted on our
era
active past or past
regress or
past echoes
the reach of
mechanisms
of continuity
Where
a long interval of
grammar is created by
‘history’
modern
metaphysical
vestiges
were almost
the natural
religion
individual
intimations
dark and sacred
which man had
against natural being
(homolinguistic translation:
George Steiner’s In Bluebeard’s Castle
[p 13: words where they appear on page])
up there, yes, up there
i
everlasting flows reflecting splendour
thought waters feeble
mountains waterfalls contend ceaselessly
ii
dark vale
and awful Power
from these thou giant children come
mighty solemn rainbows veil strange voices
eternity echoing loud motion
that gaze sublime
my mind receives
an universe of darkness
where still shadows
are faint recalls
iii
remoter death shapes those unknown
I dream inaccessibly
spirit driven among the snowy mountains
broad unfathomable heaven
accumulated storms eagle
wolf and ghastly Earthquake-daemon
were silent now
wilderness teaches man faith
Mountain understood by feel
iv
the living lightning earthquake dreams
dreamless the trance
of all that revolve apart
remote naked
I teach snakes on scorn
piled city of ruin
boundaries vast mangled stand
waste world never becomes
their lost dwelling
Vanish place
shine from
majestic blood
loud circling
v
power of sounds
calm the mountain
burn through snow
rapid voiceless and sweet
thought inhabits earth
human
silence
(homolinguistic translation:
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’
[one word per line])
Autumn Breakup / in two
not ice
not ice
leaves
leaves
leaving into
separation
between or
sepa rating
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
why &
|
leaves
|
The Dolphins in the West Edmonton Mall:
walking early evening
small australian seaside town
with no purpose
watching the sea
splash rocks below see
a porpoise leap
perfect curve
carved eons ago
*
in the pool at West Edmonton
malled dolphins play short
stopped short
whenever they start
a whitewater skid across a surface so enclosed
their leaps might curve the same perhaps as always yet
they arent leaping laze
up to breathe curl
around each other below the surface touching fast
the water is kept clean (is salted ?
& they kept together do in their way
play
they are consumed demonstrating
their exploits at 1:10 4:00 7:30
midway
between profit & less
than enough room in a short pool in
the middle of all these stores
Byzantine politics brought them here
for byzantine profits what is missing
is the sea what they see
is missing humanity & the power to exploit
they seem to play
up to it feed well no
one knows what they think lost
myths that ‘gong-tormented sea’
saw raw beauty in the early morning
before the paying crowd in they play
tricks
with that colored ball floating separate from them
all
they make
a person smile & thus accept the crime
imprisoned
in a story they will not want to tell as part of
their ongoing song sung
thru the ages of humanity
that moment
ary glimpse in waves of living curve
(the planet
moving was
another world
elsewhere
‘turning the body against itself’
Monet
the body deliberately
out of synch &
the sluggard oils
almost too thick
the violence of the gentlest
dab squish blob
plop
the oiled colours slapped
hither & yon in
each square inch
against all
gone before
under coated slap
dash & somehow
thoroughly controlled
just
there or
there
for David Milne
a transparency of
houses
lines in white of
of winter distancing
the steps taken across
the field
of light
green running
it ‘takes’ ‘you’ that
many years to
stumble
through shadings vert
vertiginous
the thick brush of
those colours
sliding
all the way
in out to:
David Milne reflections
how a colour colours the surround & how the paper flushes green
purple that red there that line how the smallest detail
is part of a pattern is growing outward & utterly flat on
that paper or canvas that gentian lake rock those signs
already signalling surrender to the palette a plateful of
harvest snow water reflecting the above all of the
painter painting ‘it’ down on to into a form from
which the eye cannot be drawn drawn in intimate
smallness expanding outward to & beyond the borders
of the frame up to whatever heaven colours come from
it was an eye
saw it
a hand
moved it
is the thing itself
paint
on
canvas
there —
Bastard Ghazal
From Japan the Punjab Persia
sounds move beyond comprehension
winds across wide bands of
ocean the upper air a tension
felt as much as heard that
as leaves rustle turn torsion
or groove I would get up to dance to but
who dances in Persia now prevention
those other sounds behind closed doors
windows chadors such original apprehensions
the Taliban’s way rules of tribe handed down
to boys run mad with power dissension
useless deadly women owned
again the world restored (don’t mention
¶
saint ampede
might impede yr progress
across the plain
text
impudent am p s
the electric stop of re cognition
¶
what wall was built
there / here
inside the wall built
long before fore
knowledge could remind one
that sometime in the future
such a wall to keep
something out or in
would be built
constructed so to prevent
a new conception conceived
so long before it ever did appear
¶
taste buds gone awry why
do aging poets forget the aging
process obsess over
too well remembered perfection of
the senses nostalgia
& utoping the now of lost
feeling there
s that ugly sharp
taste on the morning tongue
how one’s skin to another’s fresh
taste buds bodes nothing like
the sums
Floaters
balloon ghostly lost
against sky or text shifts
across viewpoints focal eyes
rational eyes
a shunning of
this droopy jellyfish drifts
across the ocean of iris seen
from within as phantasm
that way of seeing going where?
haunts
the breath that passes through all understanding
hangs white & disappearing
takes to the air a ghost
of words no longer heard
or ever
written on the deep blue
haunted mise
en abyme of sky
gone