Weaverwomen
He puts a little coffee in the cup
every morning, when I'm feigning how I sleep.
He grips it til his hands are warmed throughout,
and exhales to the tune of some old air.
There's someone's name in the soft ring of the spoon against the sides
as I roll actively about, to seem asleep.
A moment I'm bereft of coffee smells - I'm somewhere else - alone
All caught in dreams.
The stains on human sheets read like a staff
And thirds and sixteenths mark the pillows... well
The song makes little sense, but plays itself.
I'm up again to coffee smells and there
There his body was - the sheets remember.
He lies - just there - til the sheets are warmed throughout.
He seemed to be communing with the early morning light.
Oh... Ithaca comes calling again
In lines of light through windows like these.
The things we name in dreamy breath,
As songs not unlike coffee spoons -
Entrap us like a kiss that's all regret.
A glimpse of wrong colored eyes or trembling cup of coffee
Is enough to have our morning
All caught in dreams
..
Review:
Something lighter. A poem inspired by Ulysses - which takes place today, June 16th, in Dublin in 1904.
The first line is a little translation on my part of Dejeuner du Matin, a poem which says a lot without saying a lot. She's also measuring out her life in coffeespoons a la Eliot, but of course it's another person's coffee she's thinking of - it's a ritual she's merely observing, and this observance becomes her ritual. It's "the" cup - not "his" cup. It's the cup in question. Oh god it's a cup of trembling... now that's worth a finishing line, better than the rhythmic thing I've got here. It's not quite as rich as Sonny's Blues - it's not heroin here, just a quiet morning, but it feels right. There's something so terribly wrathful in the knowing deceptions taking place here.
(Technically there's no indication that the speaker is a she - it could be taken as two men after a forbidden homosexual encounter if that interpretation pleases you. I'll refer to the speaker as a she, however.)
The weaverwomen in question though are the ones who become enamored with Odysseus on his quest - Calypso, Circe, and Penelope. All of them weavers. You could say (if you were of a certain attitude) that it's metempsychosis - the transmigration of souls. Perhaps there's just something unfailingly sexy in the movement of a woman's hands over threads. It's also a reference to the sheets on which the speaker lays and the interweaving of human lives and in this case of the interweaving of dreams and reality.
"exhales to the tune of some old air." I hoped this captured the shaking away of stale morning breath as well as that sort of half-humming so many people do when they just wake up (myself among them).
The stains on human sheets. Of course your sensibilities determine just what's staining this here. Haha. It's semen. Semen and Tears (the possible name for so many a book of teenage memoirs).
He lies. It's a little obvious. I don't like painting "him" as something terrible, but it's a biased perspective. If you take it as the perspective of Molly Bloom in Ulysses, the "him" who leaves the impression in the sheets is different than the man who's making the coffee. Scandal. But more importantly mutual heartbreak.
Not yet finished.
Ick. That repetition has been stuck in my craw all day. "This dance goes on throughout his days/ He shirks his love for another name/ and I pretend to sleep." It's unnecessary. I think I wanted to have the form of the poem reflect the weaving of the titular weaverwomen, but that final repetition didn't lend anything more. "The rest of the day" is a suitable metaphor for the rest of his life. The last three lines are overly rhythmic. It would work well if this were a song or a villanelle (I couldn't possibly write a successful villanelle)
I'm liking the last three lines less and less. It's a rhythm that comes out of nowhere. Up until then we had a relatively simple rhythm. Smooth iambs progressing. It's nearly perfect iambs after "actively about" which indicates the speaker has tricked herself into actually sleeping. The flow of iambs is dreamlike up until "there / there his body was."
There's no pattern to the stanzas. Shame. 6 lines 10 lines 6 lines? 22 lines? A duovigesimal? A new form for the ages! A broken twelve and a ten within? 2 threes 3 threes a single line and 2 threes? There's something. Except the first stanza is closer to three pairs. There's no retrofitting anything here. I think I'll forego stanzas at the moment. I'll come back and see where I think the stanzas fall.
It's a window! It's a god damn window.That passing aroma was a window metaphor come from the heavens. It's just too clear.
Sleeves of light? What? Slivers. Slivers? God. It goes away as quick as it arrives. Lines of light! How's that! Because it's poetry. Get it? God sometimes I just take a thing and sodomize it. The endings always evade. Now the Elliot thing is coming back too strong. But then, was it there in the first place? Not really.
Edit number three and the last lines are being wrangled from the mud. "A kiss that's all regret" A sensible person senses an erotic undertone. Maybe a little Jesus Christ and Judas? That's a little far even for me. But then again...
I got that trembling cup in there. Now the last line or two needs to seal it somehow. It will have to be about faking sleep. "is reason enough to feign my sleep" I 've used feign enough. It's lost its color. I can't feel the rhythm. "evokes enough to keep us to our sheets/ awake but dreaming"
Awake but dreaming. Awake.... something like that dichotomy of what they're doing and how they're longing for something else. "Born back ceaselessly into the past" sort of thing... but not really. duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH DUH duh duh DUH... is that it? Is that the rhythm? iamb iamb iamb trochee iamb?
The answer was there already in the poem! All caught in dreams. Right there. Clear as day. A morning/mourning pun and "all caught in dreams." That forces the poem to a finish by tying it up in itself like a mobius strip. Thank god. Of course it's not quite -right- somehow. I think it's the rhythm still I'm stuck on. But it does deliver the proper image and tone - the disconnect. It's not really Molly and Leo by the end of it. It's moreso Calypso and Odysseus but it hasn't all gone away. Oh well, I'll let the last lines sleep a bit. I don't feel any huge desire to separate stanzas. I ought to start chewing on some new gristly bit for a time.
On taking a fourth look. Still incomplete. A sloppy finish at best... I'll have a bad taste in my mouth for weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment