The Brooklyn Rail

“…..the equivalent of many behaviors…”  - Brakhage

( a poem in one long take based in part on the words of Stan Brakhage from the 1975 interview The Seen published by Zephyrus Press )

                  the seen urgently enough a personal state slumped foward like a long day
                         out the watery window a milky anticipation moves thru accelerated nite

                                                                                  ( …like   a   train ….     )

myth of text   soundless paint & its equivalents   breath of friend  & lover
                  rain that is not wet     summer’s never coming   & spring

                           hasn’t                                                                       arrived

     all day long wind pushes watery window  east moving clouds toward another eventuality
                                      as the sky passes thru my hand   jerkily   as the motion of a tripping lens

           random memory  one frame for example blinded   clicking   waiting

                         the child’s face as big as a         SUN     sucks @ evening’s breast

                                    descending crystal of everchanging          SHADOW  &             LIGHT

falls like the breakage of wind upon the climber’s back

falls like a tray of ash upon a field of stars & dogs                   & barely audible men

     Men who have just begun to speak      speak in volumes    but have little to say
                  barely having acquired the ALEPH of Life    sound  & limitation

                                                              quivering dancing glass

   they speak       listening to their own hearts   but barely hearing

                             skin pounding in the ear like the drum of the world    a final scream

       but who there to absorb it?   we listen to ourselves too much & not

                        enough                                       symbol there like name      merciless insistence

                                                 reforming habits of EGOS

     the MUSIC  is in the silence & the movement     exhausted & standing in the way of     MYSELF

                       metaphored the images  expand & change  & all things cycle again
& the sky shifts again

                                                      & the climber’s limbs grow heavy

    as the words come gentler

                                                                        & the symphony ends

         titles appear   squiggled                                                               the film disappears

                          what will last is this  not moonlight   but mystery  poetry  & instruction

                                    the name disappears
                                                                                              & what will last is…………………blurred

                                                                                                                                                   steve dalachinsky nyc 5/03