Judith Goldman Working Note This poems had its beginnings, oddly enough, in some reading notes on the Iliad, in particular the spectacularly violent episode in which Zeus and Hera argue over the fate of Sarpedon and the role of divine intervention in human battle — should they allow his life to be extinguished? That seems very far in the background now, hardly part of this text. The poem took its final shape as I became very close with a friend as he grieved the death of his murdered girlfriend. Founded on the loss of someone I’d never had the privilege to know, our friendship was openly both discomfittingly and comfortably haunted. This poem, insofar as it can be considered a representation, stands in for my continual lost encounters with that girl and my experience of and strange identification with his extreme grief. I was always aware that the sense of loss I came to feel was highly mediated. The text’s return to its own material surface, visually and aurally, seems to stem from losing what I never had, what was never mine to break over. losing
bliss to recall what has wandered: [fall past the past & alight sympathy of noise, breath wordless as flight, but o light of life] casement clattering loose in the wind latch broke, so they broke in honor among thieves : turning back to check against checking high, high threshold clearing sunlight is energy, & energy is hard of hearing, or hard to hear from elsewhere falling up- wards of head losing in permanent attention : life forms thin, too thin a skin, little heart out, held up a face in the firewood sparks fall past. the last thing you wanted was at the deep end pennies at the bottom of the bottomless pit sparks singing in the pitch clear water- traps at, dividing spoils sunk, so conservation is lean, held up to the light held up, held the moon : in close quarters in conversation empty but so full of night. you didn’t at first but now you have it : to pull it from a hat you first must have [the rabbit] the dove, the coin words, wand, or 1, 2, 3 magic trips up up- holding & we see seeing into past the past, past lights of all passing vessels bound coastwise, they rise o how they appear to appear hard to see, hard to hear. first you have it, now : you don’t. even light won’t fall for the taking, break or breaking waves to wavelengths as they pound [the shore], forcing air in or does air force one with- drawing to fisticuffs’ shadow : pounding a pillow air forces feathers to float, to fall a pound of feathers : lead a stray home & fed it liver & kidney dinner, milk cause lies in the unit of measure cause lies shamelessly, comes to the surface telephone rings, coffee cools, is energy is feathers, is bone outside the body, is egg, is no more. precision is a feather but what is better a window or a door? : depends on what you need it for, detour or pure bliss to recall what has wandered after your own heart, catching sparks it takes one to know one, but only one to know, so it adds up to zero. no : some one left after all to wool-gather, dreaming “the lambs lied, so the shepherd cried” the golden mountain sleeps : shhh no more crying stammering : [there was feathers, scabs] [isn’t that] [it isn’t anything] [everything] Bio: Judith Goldman is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is the author of “adversities of outerlife” (chapbook; Poet’s coop 1996) and Vocoder (Roof 2001). She has recently relocated to Berkeley, Ca. |