Curtains at Cafe Primrose
[A] All that labor becomes A soft flapping in the breeze.She works with silk. She works into the nights, Her needle dipping and rising Between the folds, her eyes Finding tracks of flowers Hidden in the wash Of crimson.
Isn’t this what happens Too, when a man and a woman Lie down together in a quiet room,
This discovery and exposure Of what one suspected was there, Hidden behind the curtain,
Silence behind quick breathing?
[B] Make love as the full moon Shines or go to Hell. The fiend will grind Your bones Into pigments for death.
The man with the scythe Will strike. Unfold the fan With you face Painted on it. Reach for the gun hidden
In the lake with an yellow Boat, covered with blood of Slaughter. Study the bones, Study how mucles Move, study your Dreams for the face of that Woman you have been waiting For all these years at Cafe Primrose.
Notes: This poem was written after watching a visually rich, but really odd movie about a Japanese painter-poet, Takehisa Yumeji, called "Yumeji". I have used lines Yumeji keeps chanting in the course of the movie, and borrowed the title from his supposedly most famous poem, 'The Evening Primrose' (Yoi-machi-gusa):
waiting for the person who did not come the primrose is disconsolate this evening the moon too will not come.
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A Question
Did we run into each other
In sleep, my enemy, too dumb
And dumbstruck to speak again?
I ask this because this morning I woke to find this line in my fist:
We enter the word as one enters A cathedral, reticent about breaking The silence, of breaking into speech.
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Evening Notes - Hawks etc
A red tail hawk was circling around, a giant bird flapping its wings, attempting to gain altitude. I was perhaps one of the few people who had stopped doing whatever they were doing, in my case walking home, head bent under equations, and paid attention to that flight. It flew around and around, over the street, over the buildings on both sides, twice directly over my head, searching for a thermal that would make it rise. How long did this go on? Perhaps no more that five minutes. But are minutes a proper measure of time when in the presence of power and grace?
Very soon it did veer off into the distance and found a road of the air that took it to a certain height, where it was no more than a dark dot against a blue sky. And as I kept tracing its flight, I noticed that there were two fellow compatriots (what nationality do birds have? Do they require passports or visas? ) which were similarly circling.
I am now telling you this because this whole business to me appears to be full of metaphorical possibilities – things that are capable of literally carrying one across, starting with the relation between honing the instincts and craft to be able to find a current to raise up on, and then the relation between a writer and a reader – it is always one to one, always requires an attitude of attention, and is always limited in numbers. I thought these thoughts as I watching that hawk’s flight.
It was only later, however, when I was lying in bed with the solitude before sleep, and thought of those three hawks circling high, so very high, that I saw the connection between the desire to become an artist, and the singularity that such a desire would require of such a man, such a hawk.
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