In my seeing there was a blank and he filled that blank
with words, there were words for darkness which made it lift,
there were words for cover which ripped them off,
there were legs that crossed and hearts that crossed,
promises red and read, and the pluck of banjo had a name
for that twang, and the way he called the world into notice,
that had a word, too. Once I saw I couldn’t unsee
and the worst was that the light glaring from the letters
left blue haze under my eyelids. There are no photographs
of this time, and I can only go by what others
tell me: I was blurred and erratic, I drew a circle
of white chalk around me and called myself inviolate,
I watched for horses on the horizon, my walls
were under siege from smaller men who called themselves
heroes. They say I reached over the balustrade and picked
up the tiny ships and threw them over the edge of the world.
I tore my hair, cut one breast from my body and plattered it
as around my fortifications one man pulled another man
behind his chariot. If they say that’s how I was,
that’s how I was. I have no words for the one in the mirror
who apes me every morning. She’s not the one I remember
imagining as a young girl. There must be a way to unsee
how I tap the glass and she taps back, and which wall,
which Cassandra weeping—everything I saw I spoke to his ear,
and the wall crashed into place between us, the horse
had a bellyful of it, the blank was full of small soldiers,
and he turned from my beauty and said my name.
Rebecca Hazelton, “Book of Memory” from Vow. Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Hazelton.
An amazing voice; just watch, just hear the feverish, delirious flow of this poem, the force and the helplessness with which the thought, the words are circling around an experience so powerful that only the ancient myths can come close to its burning intensity. A lucid, crafty and intricate poem too. I am so happy people still want to take language to these liminal spaces...
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