WEBVTT

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I'm going to read from Nod
House, which is the book that

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followed Splay Anthem.

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Splay Anthem ends with
the section called "Nub."

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And increasingly,
the poems have to do

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with a group of
travelers, a kind

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of lost, ambiguously
defined tribe.

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And they move into a
place-- or the place

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they live in becomes
a place called

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Nub, which gets at, obviously,
certain senses of diminution.

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And in Nod House,
that continues,

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but Nub moves into
a place called Quag.

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And this is one
of the poems that

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first registers that movement.

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It's called "Sound
and Subsequence,"

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and it's part of
the "Mu" series,

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as was the last poem I read.

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"Mu" 42nd part.

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"Next, it was Nub's new
colony, Quag, we were in.

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Music's weapons for the
weaponless, not the ones

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we were looking for.

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Struck zithers lay
in wait behind a bush

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on the side of the road, spike
fiddles lay in wait as well.

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What it am, we blurted
out without thinking,

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throwbacks against our will.

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We were there at B'Head's
behest, melon patch inhabitants

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airlifted in.

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Smashed heads marked our spot.

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We moved in as night
fell or as day broke,

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little way of knowing which.

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We lay stitched
into the landscape,

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dressed in laugh jackets,
naked if not for scrub we

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crawled under.

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We lay on our stomachs.

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A flat planet lay
under us it seemed.

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Cloth our laugh
jackets were made of

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made us giggle, giggle part
wince, wince part giggle.

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Rough threads worked our ribs.

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We lay stitched into
Quag's interior,

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face down, sniffed
our jackets' bouquet.

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Made-up odors made us giddy,
gas we'd have sworn it was.

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Scratched-up elbows, we
pulled ourselves along on.

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Legs and bodies dragged in back.

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Moaning voices lay close to the
ground, an acoustic scrub we

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inched our way under,
lay close, cut upward.

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'Singing,' some called
it, keened, kept us going,

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kept us at bay.

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Laughing not to cry,
but cried even so.

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That we were there but
not there was no relief.

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'Aman, Aman,' we made out, not
sure what we made out, knew,

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not admitting we knew.

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[PAGE TURNING]

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Come what might
have been morning,

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they opened their eyes
assaulted by leaf light.

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Sun's bounce of image
off top side, underside.

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Looked, it seemed,
again up Sophia's dress.

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The same song we'd
have sung, they sang.

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Buttocks as-if'd into
his outstretched hand,

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he the high priest whose
apostles they'd have been,

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aromatic loin gaps, evaporative
adamance, fruit-like lower lip.

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What it wanted to say left
unsaid again, as if to be

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was to be always elsewhere.

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A room with no fourth
wall missing, no one

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outside knowing what went on.

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Late afternoon it
turned out to be,

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the apocryphal she newly
draped in sortilege.

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This, the new goat-faced
angel, the would-be book

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they'd have read began.

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So spoke the 'he' they sang of.

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So had there been
a book, the book

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they thumbed, so said we,
translating the ground we lay

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stitched in, sung about sophic
light we lay deprived of,

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leaflet embroidery, lit
but invisible, songs moot,

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suzerainty crushed.

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The motion of tones
telling sight's demise.

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The motion of tones beaked
and feathered, we sensed.

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We lay so still we felt a
tree fall 1,000 miles away.

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Outside, such as it
was, we turned in.

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Turning into birds, we cracked
seeds between our teeth.

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It was the morning
after sight's demise.

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We disembarked, a boat we
thought it was we'd been on.

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Gold-faced allure, we
could only imagine.

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A satyr's trunk
translated upward,

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we thought, a reign of
black hair obsessed over,

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the tip of his tongue assessing
her lips, teeth, tongue.

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The same song we'd
have sung leaflet

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abscondity, leaflet
revelation, sophic rump.

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Better not to have been--

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better not to have
seen than to have

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seen what we couldn't have.

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Better to be blind,
we'd have sung.

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Eked out accompaniment,
the world

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ours fell away from, the motion
of tones having nothing to say.

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Basking aloft in bodily
heaven, we came down.

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Quag's malaise lay
behind us even so.

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Sophia sighed, wanting
something else.

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She heard the woman with
the bell in her throat,

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backed by strings, adieu,
backed by rattling drums.

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There was a man, she
said, liked that she

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let his hand up her leg.

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Said it so near the
near side of singing,

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she sang, song so
understated we wept.

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Saying the moment,
living unsung time,

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she said, mouth a mere
slip, rude amenity.

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She said she wiped spit from
her lips after they kissed.

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Made-up words, the
words they sang.

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The song, not one they knew,
Quag's high-country scat

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filled with helium,
wind, warble, snort.

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It was the song
newly known to us

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we'd sing forever, lost,
utopic, wandering, toe tip

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to head of hair."

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