Chagall said
that when he painted he was
"consciously unconscious."
A face is green,
the sun looks like a feeling.
The FBI kept a file on Chagall.
How strange and bright of the FBI.
I wonder if they kept a file on de Gaulle.
I write a song whose lyrics include
"God will tell us, God will umbrella us,"
just as God did Chagall.
I am painting in a dead field
where no one walks.
I am dark green,
dark green and small.
It was one thing
to sit and play piano
all day, another
to keep the door closed,
another to introduce
every seperate piece
as if someone or
maybe even many
were listening.
Then interlopers clomped
down the stairs.
A neighbor came into the house
utterly uninvited. Another
neighbor thought you could
vote in the house, anytime
or month you wanted.
Trees unmask their branches
in the dark. Grass unmasks
the clover. The moon appears.
Then appears even closer.
the map she was given
was an icicle
the next map
didn't exist.
*
echoes are here
and there, then
I don't know
where they've gone
*
how long will
this be going
on is hard to
say, a day, a
week or two, to
tell you the truth
i have no idea
how long, it' s wrong
of me to pretend
i do, i don't
We became very
interested in doing
things the wrong
way — and each
still involved both
time and information,
which shouldn't have
surprised us since
the wrong seems
to belong to a territory
as daunting in presence
as the sky. We were literally
children, hastening
when we had a secret
moment, or sometimes
just a secret, still children
like doors inside the farm-
house, lit here and there
by flickering lanterns,
little shiftings
like voices near, far.
Lifeboats painted
more than endlessly.
Some guy named "E"
moving about in the kitchen
without our permission
or the moon's approval —
the leafless hand of the unseen moon
— the bettering of my sister
as she walks backward into
my past for one final fling
at predicting my future —
she sits upon a starlit piece
of furniture — hard to
decipher whether it is a chair or table —
it has legs just like the present moment
but the moon of the present moment
is yoking every bit of water for its reflection
and like some answer to gravity
me and my sister end there.