WEBVTT

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This is a poem called "Lineage,"
and it deals with feeding--

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it deals with ancestry.

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It deals with all those
invisible figures,

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those invisible forces that
work on our own language,

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our own words, as if the
ancestors were asking

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for these bits, these
syllables, these little shreds,

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these particles of language,
and as if in writing,

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we are feeding them, feeding
those demands, those shreds,

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those syllables, those
bits of nourishment.

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"So many voices there vie
for the voice, crowd sound

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with the white pressure
of their silences.

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Sea, and the tall
rooms just over.

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They're filling
again with mirrors.

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armchairs, my own, as
if driven, enumerations.

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The moon there is the
length of a line, the vase,

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with its ragged red
dahlias, another.

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Trace, trace forwards, for only
there eventually might issue,

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might emerge not
as entities, but as

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the breath's very imprint,
inflection, as the still moving

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rumors of the
otherwise obliterated.

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Ivory, off-white,
nacre: I read them

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in negative, move at their
restless extremity, forwards.

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Press, they press me to
say, say latch, shutter,

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the jade ladders the
angled slats make,

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once fastened against the sea.

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Ask that their silences
finally be stilled, muted,

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the sustained bar of
the unexpiated edge.

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Term, 'terminalis,' this side
of speech, the awnings stiffen.

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The charged barges running
before the open breakwaters set

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sail.

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Our signs, emblems,
are what there

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is as offering,
barter, as the small,

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uttered tokens of some
momentary placation.

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Stray figures,
figments of smoke,

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their muslins, their
bleached linens wreathed,

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turbaned in smoke.

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We survive, survive
them, but scarcely.

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Haul sound, the tiny
shreds of its sustenance

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forwards, as if language
were merely language's edge,

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its slight, still to be
acquitted segment, move.

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They're moving now
through knuckles, wrists,

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the itinerant sisters,
sporadic brides, move.

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They're moving me to say,
say jonquil, urchin, kelp,

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to feed them on the
small saline scraps

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of the water's reflections.

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Figures from the far side, even
their bracelets loose hoops

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of smoke, the oscillum quavers.

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The air's curtain runs taut.

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Tell them-- tell them
that the wind's glowing,

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that the prawns of summer
abound, that now towards dusk,

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the pines are
billowing from under.

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Tell them we'd forgot, that we'd
remembered, that the breath,

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our breath's vessel, hadn't
rusted, that one by one,

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the scattered lights of the low,
offshore islands, the estuaries,

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turn on."

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