What is the light
At the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,
The corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,
Illuminates, antique, freed from the body of
The air that carries it. What is it
For the space of time
Where it is useless, merely
Beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance . . .

-salmon | from erosion

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What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important?

What sort of a question is that he asks them.

The eye only discovers the visible slowly.

It floats before us asking to be worn,

offering "we must think about objects at the very moment
when all their meaning is abandoning them"

and "the title provides a protection from significance"

and "we are responsible for the universe."

-le manteau de pascal | from the errancy

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oh and the flapping drafts unfinished thoughts
raked out of air,
and the leaves clawing their way after deep sleep set in,
and all formations — assonant, muscular,
chatty hurries of swarm (peoples, debris before the storm) —
things that grew loud when the street grew empty,
and breaths that let themselves be breathed
to freight a human argument,
and sidelong glances in the midst of things, and voice — yellowest
day alive — as it took place
above the telegram,
above the hand cleaving the open-air to cut its thought,
hand flung

-manteau three | from the errancy

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... The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity's
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

-mind | from erosion

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... now closing his eyes as he twirls, growing smaller,
why does the sun rise? remember me always
dear for I will
return --
liberty spooring in the evening air,
into which the lilacs open, the skirts uplift,
liberty and the blood-eye careening gently over
the giant earth,
and the cat in the doorway who does not
mistake the world,
eyeing the spots where the birds must
eventually land --

-of the ever-changing agitation in the air | from the errancy

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this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

-prayer | from erosion

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Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
...
Oh knit me that am crumpled dust,
the heap is all dispersed. Knit me that am. Say therefore. Say
philosophy and mean by that the pane.
Let us look out again. The yellow sky.
With black leaves rearranging it

-the guardian angel of the little utopia | from the errancy

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All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
built-up its tiniest cathedral...
(Or is it the sum of what takes place? )
...
Oh look at you.
What is it you hold back? What piece of time is it the list
won't cover? You down there, in the theater of
operations -- you, throat of the world -- so diacritical --
(are we all waiting for the phone to ring?) --
(what will you say? are you home? are you expected soon?) --
oh wanderer back from break, all your attention focused
-- as if the thinking were an oar, this ship the last of some
original fleet, the captains gone but some of us
who saw the plan drawn-out
still here --

-the guardian angel of the private life | from the errancy

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I say iridescent and I look down.

The leaves very still as they are carried.

-the surface | from erosion

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I cannot, actually, dwell on this.
There is no home. One can stand out here
and gesture wildly, yes. One can say "finished"
and look at the woods. One can even, say,
look into the woods, as I do now, here,
but also casting my eye out

to see (although that was yesterday) (seeing in through the alleyways
of trees, the slantings of morninglight)
(speckling) (golden) laying in
these foliate patternings, this goldfinch, this
suddenly dipping through and rising to sit very still
on top of the nearest pine, big coin, puffed-out,
turning in little hops and hopes when he turns, sometimes
entering full into
a beam of sun—becoming yellowest then—these line
endings

-wood | from erosion

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All at once, as if all the voices now are suddenly one voice.
Ah, it is here now, the here. [Love, where is love, can it too
be this thing that simply grows insistently louder]
[It seems impossible it could ever pass by][she thought]
the eruption of presentness right here: your veins
[Meanwhile a dream floats in an unvisited field]
[There by the edge of the barn, above the two green-lichened
stones, where for an instant a butterfly color of chicory
flicks, dis-
appears] How old-fashioned: distance: squinting it
into
view. Even further: rocks at year's lowest tide.

-convenant | from swarm

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a string strung a thousand years ago still taut....

He turns in his sleep.

You want to get out of here.

The stalls are going up in the street now for market.

don't wake up. Keep this in black and white. It's

Rome. The man's name...? The speaker

thirteen. Walls bare. Light like a dirty towel.

It's Claudio. He will overdose before the age of

thirty someone told me time

ago. In the bar below, the counterterrorist police

(three of them for this neighborhood) (the Old Ghetto)

take coffee. You hear them laugh.

When you lean out you see the butts

of the machineguns shake

in the door way.

You wake up from what? Have you been there?

What of this loop called being beating against the ends

of things?

The shutters, as you lean out to push them, creak.

-the region of unlikeness | from never

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Spring
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see
in.

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand on it.

And these legs, look, still yours, after all you've done with them.

Explain the six missing seeds.

Explain muzzled.

Explain tongue breaks thin fire in eyes.

Learn what the great garden-(up, up you go)-exteriority,
exhales:

the green never-the-less the green who-did-you-say-you-are

and how it seems to stare all the time, that green,

until night blinds it temporarily.

What is it searching for all the leaves turning towards you.

Breath the emptiest of the freedoms.

When will they notice the hole in your head (they won't).

When will they feel for the hole in your chest
(never).

Up, go. Let being-seen drift over you again, sticky kindness.

Those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads-

thinking or sight?-

all waiting for the true story-

your heart, beating its little song: explain. . .

Explain requited

Explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require

explain the strange weight of meanwhile

and there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought

complicated obstruse subtle devious

scintillating with change and ambiguity

Summer

Explain two are

Explain not one

(in theory) (and in practice)

blurry, my love, like a right quotation,

wanting so to sink back down,

you washing me in soil now, my shoulders dust, my rippling dust,

Look I'll scrub the dirt listen.

Up here how will I

(not) hold you.

Where is the dirt packed in again around us between us obliterating difference

Must one leave off Explain edges

(tongue breaks) (thin fire)
(in eyes)

And bless. And blame.

(Moonless night.

Vase in the kitchen)

Fall

Explain duty to remain to the end.

Duty not to run away from the good.

The good.

(Beauty is not an issue.)

A wise man wants?

A master.

Winter

Oh my beloved I speak of the absolute jewels.

Dwelling in place for example.

In fluted listenings.

In panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.

Muzzled the deep.

Fermenting the surface.

Wrecks left at the bottom, yes.

Space birdless.

Light on it a woman on her knees-her having kneeled everywhere
already.

God's laughter unquenchable.

Back there its river ripped into pieces, length gone, buried in parts, in
sand.

Believe me I speak now for the sand.

Here at the front end, the narrator.

At the front end, the meanwhile: God's laughter.

Are you still waiting for the true story? (God's laughter)

The difference between what is and could be? (God's laughter)

In this dance the people do not move.

Deferred defied obstructed hungry,

organized around a radiant absence.

In His dance the people do not move.

-underneath(9) | from the errancy

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one or two of jorie graham's poetry books can be found at your local bookstore. if you're in dc, try kramerbooks in dupont circle.