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.
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