Charles
D’Anastasi
the boatman’s log
a woman’s hands bring their own ghosts
faded photographs and a beating heart
in the boatman’s log an abundance of low
level zero patterns associates of drifts in a canal city of the
mind the head coming and going at the sight of
water lapping against the steps the rotting thick
doors beneath the redness of the geraniums a
balcony with open shutters two lace curtains
fluttering in the wind folding on each other’s
slenderness conjuring a woman’s hands scrubbing
a kind of midnight-burden frantic rowing towards
the embrace of another bridge the prosperity of a
moon stalking the boat from an upside down sky
the poet’s last room
the truth is the words will probably never
get you as close as you think to the writer and if you did get that close,
what then? what’s left is nothing but nakedness pure and utter…ugh! is
that what you really want to take home, somebody else’s complete
shedding of barriers and decorum? is that what you really hope for, to be
truly medicated with words and certain elaborate ideas? let’s face it;
there are only so many rooms in a person’s life. it’s one thing to be
tantalized with the keys to the poet’s last room, to be on the cusp of
an uncertain world. but for me that’s it, the moment i stop feeling
twitchy, that’s when i’m overcome by a vague sense of betrayal.
sure i’m always scratching or knocking on
doors. truth is i don’t mind feeling like a waif given shelter on a wild
night when i’m being led to the antechamber of this or that poem.
something happens when you’re led in that way.
so I suppose I haven’t really sworn off the
machinery of words. so long as someone doesn’t come along with the
perfect book that inadvertently ends up neatly solving life’s impossible
riddle. that would be like someone’s imagination trying to cope with the
sadness of every clock stopping.
if that ever comes to pass, i’m going back
to one of those english novels. i’ll consider those straight and green
stretches of lawn outside one of those country manors where everything
depends on so much geometry and calmness. i will not go anywhere near the
last room. nothing much will seem to change. i will hear the full swish of
gowns brushing against the low cut grass. and notice brocaded bodices,
strategically compressed, everything so properly allowed. some heads will
bow slightly in passing each other. the buzzing of bees will be heard in
the distance. it might even rain discreetly.
city triptych on a monday afternoon
in the moving crowd one face
separates above a fugue of
shoulders mobile phone pressed against her
cheek the broken will of her
tears breaching the public balance of the
afternoon ignores the spindle of the outside world
where halfway up the town hall clock white birds
round the corner above the language of the
street when a tattooed
hand emerges unconcerned
from a rubbish bin clutching a
bottle with the skill of
it the hot breath of it
all other faces are accounted for keep their own
counsel wild things hushed in a bubble each to
their own stripped
Copyright
© Charles
D’Anastasi
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