David Dowker

NOTES FOR GREEN LAKE

      "The message was the world translated,
       and speaker and listener became one."
       (Michael Palmer - Notes for Echo Lake)

Words go up in smoke and so occur 
as only almost avatars of those omens shaken out of trees 
suddenly becoming more than the sum of their flows.

And I as is. It goes without saying. I was the lake against 
the shore(d) and a voice that echoed across the waves, 
and I is that carrier of water.

While young summer may have no choice and multiplies, 
as some things are more than they seem: 
a seed, a thread, a drum -
                                         coriander, honeycomb, 
lyre -
         syntax and silence.

Or the syntax of silence. Noticing the coincident tuning 
of various objects. The articulate resonance of this passage 
of years as if the mere facts mirrored murmur meaning 
-fully. The body of the text (entity) revealed as another 
veiled reference to itself. The angels of incidence of light 
filtered through the leaves. My thoughts just wanted to be 
scattered photons of that radiance.

Some things are less than comprehensible.

The ringing in my ears throughout the day. The telephone 
next morning and then. The silence which follows. He was 
a shrunken mask of himself. A sprig of cedar, plain apron 
and gone. The absurd machinery of that descent.

The ringing of the telephone sheared that silence and the plain 
mask of mourning followed. A spring from that declension. 
Winter in the cryptosphere.

The letters in the reeds. Knee and elbow glyphs, the _Y_ of 
thighs. What he had seen with his own eyes, rising and falling. 
The conversation never ends. Composition is driven by 
the pistons of our arms and legs, spelled by lines of flight.

The correspondence of the letters of our exchange with the S- 
curve of the returning. In the living room he dreamt the door 
to the hallway being methodically removed from its hinges. 
They are standing outside. They are drunk with the powers 
of light.

Linguum of the world. Tiny white jasmine beside the muted 
fire of the flowering maple and the casually painted blue 
hydrangea. Passion flowers strangely 
artificial, as if made by some obsessive 
hand. Oleander and datura, assorted orchids 
and staghorn fern.

Eyes to see and ears to hear and light-foot it along 
these neuropaths. In the film Orphée he transcribes 
messages from the (underground) radio.

The lake's green explains what light cannot entirely 
represent, a thought-blot, toxins, the bomb (population, 
data or other) or Marilyn Monroe, a "box of rain" in 
an air-plane, the flat cut of the sapphire she removed from 
her swollen finger. The co-conspirators examine the text 
and ponder her image in the para-tarot. A cochineal rattle 
in the background. Ochre over amber, blood-type ruby
in translation.

The examiners of the text cough in unison and click on 
another card. Here as everywhere her image replicates 
itself.

Truth to be told the inventors of the alphabet were many 
and did not necessarily work as a team. Here as nowhere 
else I am reminded.

Today is a transparent day of smooth talk and trapezoids 
and red meaning whet(ted) and the stone as a verb, 
double-edged, incised with luminous numerals, the spider 
who taught me to write, the yes and no of the code, 
the spider who forgot how to read, the delicate shell 
of her ear, a barking frog, the mystery of mysteries.

Does biology know humanity by name?

In claw and tooth removed. The numinous indifference of 
nature. Stick figures flicker across the screen.

Pluto warned us of the time-bomb in the ticking and the loose 
thread wound around his finger. Remember Los Alamos. 
It's a sirius business.

The inventor of the letter _A_ sees each colour of its saying. 
The lake is read as concentric circles of ripples and where we are 
coming from remains under water. "Possibly Maybe" was the song. 
Here they sing in tongues or hum along.

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