Sunday, January 6, 2019

Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple by Robin Coste Lewis

Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple

(An erasure of Grant Allen’s Recalled to Life)
 
I don’t believe
I thought
 
or gave names
in any known language.
 
I spoke
of myself always
 
in the third person.
What led up to it,
 
I hadn’t the faintest idea. 
I only knew the Event
 
itself took place. Constant
discrepancies. To throw them
 
off, I laughed,
talked—all games
 
and amusements—to escape
from the burden of my own
 
internal history. 
But I was there
 
trying for once
to see you,
 
longed so
to see you.
 
I might meet you
in the street:
 
a bicycle leaning
up against the wall
 
by the window. Rendered
laws of my country
 
played before my face. 
Historical, two-souled,
 
forgotten, unknown
freaks of memory.
 
The matter of debts,
the violent death
 
of a near relation,
and all landing
 
at the faintest conception.
Dark. Blue. And then.
 
All I can remember
is when I saw you. 
 
It was you
or anyone else. 
 
The shot
seemed to end
 
all. It belongs
to the New World:
 
the Present
all entangled, unable
 
to move. Everything
turned round
 
and looked
at you.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.