Lisa Robertson

from DEBBIE: AN EPIC
(the sad parts)


MY HUMAN FACE A BLAZING SHIELD

is all that I could give or she demand

so I shall hazard shame for future love

and list with soldiers my degenerate name:

Debbie. My name is Debbie. Unhappy, purple

hope has made me dote and vainly tell

of parts obscene below the waves' crescent

now flecking heaven's screen with stuttered light -

dress up the supper, refit the beds

receive these trifles for the singer's sake

I'll weep and speak to you of food and

space and loss and how

freedom spoke a diction abstract as

we shared the hammered silver bowl

and banished fate and passed through

widely opened gates in triumph. Lust's

dumb muscle imitated velvet

jackets of uncertain manufacture, loopy

noble, some years from the spleen

of my topic. I'd like to live with an economy

that's beyond me - but I have long long

tethers attached. For the sake of communication

I die into an arm, encumbered. Dear

sexual friends: between the psyche and the drowned

tail, an expensive circumstance -

bumpety-bumpety-bump

my sinking pleasure no longer sustained

in wet arms and shaking hair -

and if I should dream when I'm awake

if I should describe the thing opaque

if I should lie, if I should fake

if I should be held by such formality as ice

a gentle fire she fed within my veins

with fruitless care - for my girlish part

sad cypress, vervain, yew compose the wreath

I pursued her exiled trace

as when a whirlwind holds to its mark

nor could I be mistaken

as long as larking punishment mocks

with fruitless care, as long as quarrelling

winds give sparkling face to the woods

- all things full of horror and light -

distract my pain and repell my fears

with rattling clangour tear the frocks

as long as I commit to screens

these notes and names and passing breaths

to seize my theme: how the soul can hate

as when a sudden silence stifles

hope and oars work at nothing

I beheld horror in the wet shade's message

and time left me there standing

I did not witness morning. Once rivals

loved with fruitful care. I haunt this ratio

or throw it to you shrinking sea in augured

tongue bastard Latin hard song my busy pain

in moody tissue grieving

you were mortal for a while. I can live

no better. Neither plenty of arrogance

plenty of gauze nor the hard wall of

fingerbones which is memory can erase

this fact: we were half made when the empire

died in orgy. Because we are not free

my work shall be obscure

as love! unlinguistic! I

bludgeon the poem with desire and

stupidity in the wonderful autumn

season as

rosy cars

descend



ROSE I BELIEVE I'VE FOUND THE SOCIUS

listening to rome's whimpering

clerics slack vernaculars purchased

us rose I mean franchised not purchased



Already I do not share their attitude

lilac I am still basking in the nine

teen nineties sun I had not died I

was erotically attracted to

my story I said it was a job for

someone else to stutter to count to be

a word moved across the kitchen I could

only call is it you Father crashing

the lamp I cursed his journey I did

not have much to do vast billows roll swol

len a sheer mountain of water parts in

to receding ripples wide is the still

ness transparent mistaken dreamt citizen

darkened by lilac the suburb near some

city but not my city I do not

love thee word whom I do owe



Don't be afraid tulip for time is fat

with our indiscretions



Gentian there is a death and no picture

for it and chucking utility one

longs to be useful - this place overwhelms

me I require a clearing just for a

moment o cancel this earth and this

effort of wanting then never again

but what would I learn from the exertion?

to grasp the speechless part? to what end

animals and stars who say nothing? what

purpose gentian? but the iterate name

in bland ecstasy coupling greenness and

want greenness and sugar I feel the tongue soft

ening as I swore I wouldn't this my

novice tongue I sell it to you persons

of praise and astonishment invisible

inks pooling nevertheless on nothing it is yours



Furthermore rose I have attributed

incorrect motives to an archivist

simply for something to happen. Stay - I

speak to the public transportation



TWELVE DAYS THE MARCH ENDURES AND DURING THOSE

the imperium's chained in gold for use and ornament

we question whether such ponderous prize may sustain

the role of stimulus: some shun the sight (the moody ranks

are anxious for themselves so renounce pleasure, maps)

then what is hope - fauve catalogue: milk-blue

beer-halls' deep-lying know-how as saecular senate, pre-

ex-officio half-Joe's demi-dreams of oak-leaf vine-leaf putty-

coloured thistle-downed lax weekend-spas

Good-bye! good-by! sea-sick isis-luna sea-cave moon-light we're

trench-digging trigger-happy bull-dog walkers. We're

quick-sand and take the victorious element