Before Recollection

Ann Lauterbach

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691014371, 9780691066981
• eBook ISBN: 9780691219769
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

From Before Recollection:
TRANSCENDENTAL POSTCARD
Ann Lauterbach

The outlook such that time is told on waking,
Without aid of cock or clock's crow.
In fact all the birds are elsewhere,
Poised on glossy page or in some fall
Migration. Sun up over mountain is precision,
Then mist travels, exhaling day.
All else, all change, is air,
Dew relenting on the blades
And mirror rhymes
Where water bears resemblance:
A strut of hues to pale even Revlon's alchemy and,
In the center of its glaze, a cauldron of sky-cast blue.

II. AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

Saint Lucia

1.

Suppose it is enough: rock, tree, sky,

These uncounted, unaccountable surfaces.

And suppose this is the entrance

Among these hills

That sound high, far-off, look old,

Hooded, sloped, ending with an owl, a cup.

Through lime slit leaves

Light travels, a rag.

There are tangles everywhere, and salt.

Under the leg of a chair, its rim half-shining.

The sea in the distance, its rim half-shining.

2.

Not quite fledged the surfaces change

More-or-less dangerous, as if

Partly digested or not yet evolved.

Tuesday; o’clock.

Direction is peripheral,

A shapeless vicinity cast by net.

Light is a rag. Leaf, bird, that.

Silence, rescinded as wings,

Marries air to yellowness.

There are dictions here

That adhere to necessity, to speech not said.

3.

Between the ominous and transcendent sea,

Each present as light determines,

Are insignias: triangles at large, passings.

Everything is wordless but palpable.

The harbor with its vessels.

The sky with its slow baggage.

The mind with its vessels, its baggage.

Clouds come from the same direction

Slowly over the hills, encumbered passengers.

There is nothing between us

But the play of these various casual leaves.

4.

The sea, solitary or not,

Implies the confines of a dream.

I’m between Beckett and Bishop,

The one entirely in, the other there

Civilizing Brazil, clarity to clarity.

I’d rather be a fishwife or a frog,

A secretary taking dictation.

Do this. Do that.

Respite from the brave and intent.

The mango I ate under that flat-leafed tree

Tastes better than any imagined thing,

Salt erased by sweet

Intoxicating, solitary, a tongue within.

5.

Dipping back to gather some quality,

Not the stone but the color of the stone

As it travels, light’s motif,

To land on the rim of a cup.

The words might be seen

Lying here on the beach

Complete and distinct in sameness.

And I have kept you with me

As a version of nearness

To say what I am kept from saying

Here, on the beach, with stones piled up.

6.

The drone flies up to take a queen.

He dies ecstatic, founding an empire.

Such aspiration! Such requital!

When things get crowded she leaves,

Takes up home in a cave

With a swarm of workers and eunuch drones.

The hummingbird has been each day

To stick its long thing into the blooms.

Conrad says, “the mere incidents of the surface,

The reality, the reality I tell you fades.”

Light is delayed on the opaque leaves.

7.

Or suppose not.

A cup is not an inlet.

The hours climb up the hunch-backed hills.

Thursday; o’clock.

The owl has its habits.

Everything seems random, diffuse,

As images collect

Into some quality, as of surfaces intact.

The lizard visits twilight

Down one leg of a chair, across the porch.

The hills end with passage, a cup, a call.

8.

They clamor to get out; rat, rag, owl,

The hummingbird, its radiant stick,

And the three-note call.

The hens are parading and dull.

Leaves keep moving; they want to be winged.

The syntax of solitude is

To witness versions that clock and petal,

Enfolding instances. Among these hills

That are high, far-off, hooded, old,

Sloped, ending with a cup.

The thing is handed to us. We hand it back.

In the diction of surfaces, a distinguished absence.

In the Garden

The view is partial and has always been

In deference to what lies ahead:

Some version of next, a shelf

Packed with trophies from a minor war,

Winter’s end. On the flight back the sky

Was visually unconscious,

A vast impairment as when recollection

Blinds the whole with a single storm;

Hours formed into days, weeks and years

Lost to this impasto mask we travel through.

The view is partial. Today, slow and bright

In spots, it crests and falls apart, melting.

I have in my mind’s eye an ancestral place

Thick with iris, lily, tulip,

Whose high grass, parted by a path, I

Never saw but which she painted, sitting out

On the lawn, in late spring, everything seen.

As Far as the Eye Can See

Perhaps the weather has nothing to say

Other than the simple duress of cause and effect

We muster into forbearance,

So little of which is left it takes on desire

As when reticence reaches its limit,

Signals an embrace. The wind is favorable

Even as it thrashes the stipulating tree

Into panic, an urgency beyond its means,

Reminding us of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Contents
• I. Naming the House
• II. As Far as the Eye Can See
• III. Psyche’s Dream
• IV. A Simple Service
• Note