The Argument From the Dranse

(THE ARGUMENT FROM THE DRANSE)


The Dranse is a river. Dranse is an old word
in the Savoy language, sister to our word
drench; it means a torrent down the mountain,
a torrent is a flood that the rocks control.
Shaped by the rocks it shapes, a mountain
torrent is the perfect reciprocal gesture,
a word among things, fluent and responsive,
carving out by passing by. It is a fleeting
gesture that changes eternities, a mark
elapsing that leaves behind hard meanings
where it passes.


[The poem begins on Saturday, 7 August 2004, in La Borne.]


Not lost too much
tooth the touch of
tender in the fine
a fork among friends

O salt to love who
after hamamelis
lit the whistle
hard on its going down

a gong for spraddle
or butter a mother
be care, keel, any
anyboat you see

smell of kerosene
making sense green
a furber or a foal
wagtail on 2 lawns

slow grade up cliff
startling chough clouds
limestone patter of sunshine
organdy pear rock

pine lime chalk calvaire
watch satellite sputum
gel on monitor stickum
explain to the pharmacist

don’t smoke lobelia
not catering blue pipit
oblige wooden guest
palace union semaphore

means always carrying
overanxious psyllium
protractor’s narrative
circular newspaper

what was said is neophyte
it bleached pleadings
of foreign capital embedded
in domestic cleavage

alternate with druidry
take to the sea scum
sloshed ankles of a Thalassite
prancer & the period

magnesium epopteia
sly words for raree
flash your popinjay theory
buster your sorebones

one’s neck is long
spirit history Oneida
sharing their SUV
a woman picks her nose

the mountains notice
canít fool them analysis
particulate chemist
waiting at hot crucible

Sumerian alphabet discovered
this is it cloud on that land
scattering wheat amazed
bone white of pearl barley

account for matter
quills release in enemy
to ink or restless
ceremonial pause

All the waits to small a get
midlight on the balcony a pax
waits a pope hand signal on the high
who do it with raised hands
harrowing heaven every death

time to go to bread
hill to have a horse
cool now but the sun
under Mont Evian
—we are named for what we see—

Say? That too imponderable
konversatie chipping at the wall
roughcast philosophy all the kind
a diner on the moon a soviet
uncertain about articles

a man the man man itself
chelovek a preposterous guess
this & not that or better
butterfly bush all purple brushes
diplomats assemble neckties and begin.

The ostensorium has golden censers
hands touch everything like flies alighting
nothing past the blue of place to gold
the somber mountain of what happens
down which it is to come down cloud later

second coming! river running north
cold in case a squadron of jackdaws
measured against math resistance
pure morality or puritan the lip of left
never kissed the body’s folds

aching for political caress
where does everybody live
there canít be fields without streams
stream without loosestrife cows bells
down Mont Chéry the goats stampeded

dense manifesto a creed to need
write in one paragraph what is believed
to be the case or who dropped the sparrow
in the first place
and who the hero the thrush
sings to what alphabet to write that name

drenched with particulars the rocket burst
fireflowers over the limestone lake the folk
hurry up the narrow road to be amazed
sound & light as if no other where together
only here across the clear green water rose

a touch to be as dense as history
chance the prepositional rapture
charlatans of sun disease
rehearsing islands to goat farmers
mountains are to lose in but what

Akkadian policy where it all went wrong
language used to letter laws
write down instead what never was
and make it be Gospel of Bethany
the afterlife of Madeleine-Marie

language goes wrong when it records
annals should be pictures scratched in rock
or a church built of common stones
mysterious basketmakers weave history in
but writing means for pure invention

(hard for puers to have puers)
all comes to this new next
a fleet of uncertainties arriving
on the morning tide no water stands
mountain pitcher pour Aquarius

no strange vocabulary apple
red fish green shadow hill
hill habit slipside after
cunning rede-motes of old never
a spill of milk a spunk of flame

eunoterus or scrabalost no not
those radio all words are strange
in a foreign country lose all subtlety
that usually marks the delight of speaking
now just coarse where is this
and when and how

and otherwise the spirits of the flowers
make the breeze that lifts the blue over
quoting Wordspear and Lakesworth too often
bramble bush here and a gorse over there
where the sheep’s shadow climbs the hill

the herd corners after spiral path
chronometer built in stone and guess the sun
falters through the autumn gate to make born
who would do own faltering later coin by coin
until the green girl walked along the brick

which is the Greek for river where the girl
recumbent yet advancing swoon by swoon
enkindles amity among the moths our mothers
every creature was in time or will be
by virtue of that virtue held in heart wax

from the blond beehive achieve
intoxicating liberal magazines copper shells
to go to war with the priest and his cycle
when the wind dies down
and every straw relaxes
pelargonium and lavender sun behind the hill

life is a valley it really wants to tell
the whole story now thunder on the mountain
rain spits a flower wet a pink one
and nobody knows the crest of Mont Evian
in sunshine still and elsewise nubibus

colles celentur or pick the flower
and have done with it a pharmacist
of little wounds and wonders – who
lit the light? – no one but color is
so color has to do the work of heroes

slumbering inside the wooden horse
in Cernagora
the plump girl in blonde wig is Helena
o peruque of falsity a cock crows also
just before dark like Hegel’s owl
which had overflown these battlements

gold or no gold to tell the story
whole but name no names – pure
invention— maligned by whose inferiors
temporary heartbreak and bus downhill
until the soldiers see the lake and cry

armistice of motives is a kind despot
a blue entitlement the theorist says
but others plead the Justinian excuse
one must rule the world to answer heaven
or build a sky that answers to his name

nobody needier than neat the Greeks knew
woodcarved language of the logothete
polychromed by famous men to kill a bear
or bring a Bulgar home all love is pain
incessantly consented to the sand is wet

the blood of virgins saturates the books
thought Commedia dell’arte practical vise
a turngrip shaped like a crucifix
lets the tyres change from wheel to wheel
all love falters the same circle
describe the street

fall to its knees and not for prayer
but work between the virgin
and the guava fruit
whose lake is thick with tule reeds
the wind chatters them together
sticks on sticks on necks
to wake all things then meditator
from his dreams

+++

thunder but no rain hear her voice
thunderbird
but see no face it all is mountain

limestone religion two girls pétanque
toss underhand the iron balls
chop the jack away
all the mystic gates are closed by music

+++

the incendiary difference like a goat
calling to its mother on the hill
a sprawl of udders down the cliff
and some high houses oak castaways
along the cloud road rapture
is it or time to begin screwdriver
hungry for the hard Christians
here are dragons

here hard money drives a tan chalet
up rock and the keen scatterers
of destiny girl by girl
pétanque in the church’s shadow
Saint Guérin Pray For Us who
smooth the stone in place
with such amazing effort that nothing
shows just a furry cat waiting
on the wall

say nothing lest it turn to gold
the baker’s wall so bryophyted
and vascular green too
the stolid amazements of what
no one makes happen
trip by submarine
through the green rhizomes
of the mind’s valley where naught
is where it should be
among the weltering artisans
of local numbers

it is to live for other people that is all
interrupted by it never rained the headlight
explains the empty road too many particles
to call it mist alone or angry molecules
or barbara celarent where the teacher
turns his back at last on all the words

and when the words are gone
the god is gone
Saint Antoine d’Egypte shown with a pig
borrowed from another Anthony
or lent to him
which way does borrow go imprint a’s
object on b’s use of it or other way in
bells remind the empty church
of all it’s lost

all the people who will never come again
and kiss the pig
or beg the saint’s protection
against the usufruct of dream the hectic
dreamlife of moral personages
lost in stucco
only in graffiti to recollect
at last the icon
that spreads wide the mountain
of remember

be small with ceremony the old pews creak
old jug for the spirit to take comfort in
be housed in mutter …..
the worst take shape
zygotes of influence and plasma of remorse
till finally nothing final even speaks
why should it
sumac drupes as red here as in Algonquia


+++

make more fit in everything too loose
make it tight and turbulent entablature
of a temple to an absent god
or just the priests are gone
the god let loose is fire to roam
glad among kayakers and a prayer for rain

turn free by road assemblymen of hell
who caught this town before the avalanche
and made the tourists come to feed
the goats and the cows’ transhumances
are green with love
all the occasional shadow kiss
tastes of September

turning round to come in all the bitter
we need more salt the angelus begins
who kneels down among the ruins
of a strange idea
came down from heaven reek of iodine
and everything looks small today

like staring into the chalice of a flower
mutations of large corporations compete
with natural decay to isolate tragedy
from news
a blue feather floats into a street
in Geneva
the lake spumes a jet of counseled air

so high as if somebody was saying something
three dogs in concert here
like crystal goblets chinking
it is as if the coast were really
edifice and opal
exalted voices of the children
spending their penny in the willows

lead down by tile the rain-smart roof
magpies many and an old man on a horse
clops through the town no turns to two
a couple feed their mounts
on neighbor grass
between this life and the bishop

or how Saint Guérin must pray for all
ox and ass and Antoine’s pig
and not till well into La Captive
does the author get a name
given by the beloved the provisional
the sole determinatrix of local actuality

who says ‘mon cher Marcel’ or some such
formula memory will not retain (nous lépreux,
Paris se vaut une messe)
all the famous jabber
the mantle of this rock earth has so long
endured names sweet as melons from Cavaillon

the perplexing simplicities of Doctor K
she’s reading So what ís that bird there?
open to a pretty magpie half by half
black and white old Feirefiz the son
of Gahmuret was divvied up
like one of these

his lower parts a natural heathen white
only the intelligence can sin age of reason
in this season Guérin busy with sick cows
the peasants cured the saint
of wicked intellect
and made him a patron saint of sick animals

well did they know that the body
cures the mind
the body builds the stone
that puts the point of god
high in the mountain air
only the body is pure
who can do no evil or at most be guilty
of carnal inefficiency
or dwindled milk o road of milk

that leads through Spain by Santiago
on to Wales
where Silver Road’s palace hits the sky
the stars are her footmen and the clouds
her gonfalons unfurled above the sleeping
personage whose error is in the name
inscribed

+++

melon seeds return to compost heap
wasps are always near too many names
swimming pool the different shapes of men
meme taille et meme allure of these
simple hearted merchants of romance

wash in dragon’s blood
and sleep below water
because only that one can whose life
is so constrained by verbal sinews it
might as well be immortal and it is
the way a rock is always too busy to die

the long identities the place called Throat
of the Devil where cyclamens are growing
on the soaked wall of the ravine the name
repeats itself in visitors who hurry home
cherishing the word cyclamen
cherishing the devil

whose rocky body they walked inside
whose only body is their body
wind comes down the valley hard
every place is a body inside a body every
body is wide open to invaders

chattering Flemish in the supermarket
clash of chariots and melon reek
subtract a wagtail from a pine tree
butterfly swooping on the glacier
the time of things
is scribbled deep inside

each one alone and none
to wait for kindness
is all here and afterwards the farmers
scratch it out of the ground
and make room for new
or where would the car go if the road
didn’t differ with the mountain
breathing

firelily they call it all around the town
be careful of eternity the foam
makes the fingers shake
like a walk uphill
in evening sunhaze down La Terche
distance is chimera anyhow a plow

to furrow sky with and plant such wheat
as grows to spring night with fierce little
lights in whose gleam nothing
but themselves alone
light that just illuminates itself
we pray to dark
to augment the instrument of stars
loro influenza

to have by these need-nights a void
pronounced upon the Manifold or pleroma
while equilibriums of ordinary passions
totter to war the animal that tries
to answer every question with its teeth

a kenning for it or a darling coal measures
shouldering beneath the Yorkshire lies
seven hundred years
to put the language out
and then the miners come
in white silk scarves
in sooty tweed jackets solemn saying naught

it has to tell everything or else believe
because telling is a cure for understanding
so when every word is spoken
all the things are gone
and the game plays itself
beneath the apple tree
the steel balls arc and clatter down
and women laugh

+++

want to hide out from the jumbo jets
up here
class struggle and theology and find
instead by skin
a morality of leaf and bark academy
of stone
spent so much time walking on the mezzanine
among those has-been lights
men call the stars
the girl next door was one
of those pale Russky charmers

eating in the lap of Lenin
till the conversation banked
smokeless fire of the shivaree
everybody got married
and no one came it is the rutabaga
principle a head
made of wood and eyes made
of all that’s been lost

a woman on a ferris wheel
a champion of pain
o black Mercedes mother
of all living course my street
barricades of torpor and a strange
lake-dwelling fish
as if an eel caught philosophy
and understood its practice
as universal doctrine
not just its own long way home

home is always the next port of call
among the wolves
three quarters up the mountain
and the wind
get a receipt for the paper kiss
a glacier
the shoulder’s sore from all
it never carried
because the fated burden belongs to the wind

even if the servant sneaks beneath the hedge
and smokes
and the snow melts
not even by the core of August
and not a single name of tree
survives in English
the man nipped a fox’s tail
the tiger jumped
hardware and liquid crystal
the moon’s on fire

+

nominal tower hawk on the head
oak fence gorse hedge poor hedgehog
flat from car the spill of autumn
in the yellow air
the car is courage and a spear and sarx

means flesh when psyche’s gone to town
and left her mirror all steamed over
hot from her looking in it it is death
for the soul to take a shower

Parmenides was right there’s never
just one horse the palamino up La Chaux
clematis on porphyry lord loveliest imperium
nobody power but the body’s whim to know

to know by touch and stone remember
to go to come to back home to tell
these four will do and let the skin
be quiet with the language of the stone

+

rectiform crucibular investigative flop
to sail so long down the gutter
in a folded newspaper
origami Figaro and out to sea among cockles
coracles limpets brooding on Lacan
nautilus keeps secrets
in their ingrown rooms

all the strategies beasts incarnate
to avoid the simple blossom
of the every which way wind
or greedily to snatch the air inside
and keep it there
safe from music circulation of Lady Oxygen
cancellation of the Other
and sermon for the self

mitigate a nettle wear a leek
in that sombrero
let it rain hard down
the cleavage of the mountain
gush the cosmetic parables
size of a sparrow
allure of a jay shadows in the willow trees
weave the next millennium’s religions

all subtle poetries of hoopoe and plover
and gulls learn to fly at midnight
and their white tidings will rouse the house
no man will dare say their sermons for them
and women will wake up and say their dreams

though Introduction to the Devout Life
was written here
if here is taken loosely cloud chambering
la Tête Noire
two horses and only two Poverty
and Liberty
broken china heaped outside old magazines
every word has at least two meanings

and the skull lasts longer than the brain
think on this voyagers with canoes
on shoulders sweating through
Ouisconsin portages of old
the bone remembers in its strange fashion
where the pudding of the flesh lets slip

our parents called us lust in idleness
because Pontiac is cheaper than LaSalle
and a ghost haunts only his own terrain
humble as a bee disinclined to range
firewardens on their towers
dream Byzantium

the naked Empress comes to everyone
who sleeps
head of a monkfish caught on a tree branch
breath is a flag and the army is the skin
watch them falter through the rye oblivion
is a ribbon knotted round a knuckle

or comes who calls a skull is resonant
clear and clean is empty and a wind issueth
which tells all the wit this bone once held
Merlin or Mandeville a woman who knew all
and poured her slim pitcher on the table

milk of all known valleys the precious molds
make cheeses but the skull
has two horns on it
or six or four and the horns are hollow howl
at sacred instances when priests think
godwind blows
and they blow back
to answer mystery with reverence

the faces face each other it is marble
each woman is a plausible envoy of her kind
a plenipotent just arrived from the archaic
one sees this face a lot in dreams and ten
thousand years ago saw in their sleep too

mother of magnesium sea wife temptress
the air’s vestal around her
but she magnifies
all occasions are the sun of time
all space is touch
all seeing is an anger of the eyes
to choke the distances
hardware of her hours gondola down
the blood stream

always so much singing passes in profile
we know this nose this hurry
because a sky falls into place around
such angular momentum
thought it was a woman’s face in twilight
seen hurrying towards the harbor
when black sails come

cloud come along come along high head
silver blue pirate sky with dory cloud
down here invading pines
describe alternate universe where
all the strings uncoil at once
and quarks are his and hers at last
duality is our unity brother humans
who leave behind

look up the names of things have you
by the neck
or choke your prayers with kisses
left from dream
the alternative to obvious is everything
the alternative to everything
is not nothing is the one
thing permanent as the attention paid to it

come along donkey bray a buddy understands
come along rapture
to tease the sleeping nun
ivory and silverplate brushes worked
with amber
anything to keep her hair out of her eyes
and let the light in
that part of the wind
the human brain can see

don’t harden hearts against the felons
on the gallows
their lives’ last spurt loves the world
round them into place
for nothing lasts without the urgent
want of it
screaming yesness on a migrant hopescape
until the cat seems to stand still
and let you stroke it

the angelus rings over Europe sprinters
wake early
down in Athens and wonder what Greeks
eat breakfast
after all the high school philosophy
a hundred meters faster than anybody
to make sense or naumachy
off Nauplion how fast a shmatte
drives a skiff

believe the wind
it’s all there is to be driven
inside and out the first of all things
and last is wind
harsh pneumatology of a desert
saint Antoine
stoned with abstinence staggers
on his crutch
god the pharmakon for vision’s torments

he’s made crutches of his crucifixes
and a bell
and the huffy little pig
looks past his robe
hearing the ding dong of a lost religion
in desert stagger market stagger
DAX and FTSE
stagger Glastonbury and watermelon pine

the girl with Corsican eyes
the cloud down La Chaux
this vision lasts as long as time and then
Parmenides was sad all going and no coming
as if the road wrapped right back on itself
and gold people walked along it
counting seeds

all they have he thought is
what they leave behind
a measure? a moonchild? a sad trapeze
deserted by its acrobat?
every night god sends
a little older than the television?
an advocate?
dear god what has happened to her face?

+

beyond Seytroux the same cloud
the power pylons march from mist
everything surrounds everything and it’s only
August the yellow people walk below the ground
crowding upwards to the surface earth
to be reaped like everybody else old snathe
of time swung and who knows what or who
the blade of it be old mariner

one is ages from the sea here
or any maybe lake
to milk the clouds up from
or vaporetti in the bloodstream
woke still feeling the wool of whose garment
on his fingertips
change road to make the horses whinny
and the hinny haw
spread the load around to balance lucency

decency? a stroke above the nine
and be buried
hear the gongulous toll bronze above
the catafalque
and the neighbor gospel lady hum
in her pants suit
priestcraft is triumphant
and the church is cracked
it’s the same car coming up the mountain
over and over

they go to mass and come back chemical
come cured small rivers with thick barges
hoisting home
lock by lock the boat of it ascends
sweet miracle
to get a loaf of bread out of a mountain
with the troll singing at his forge
unalcheming all that gold

Corbá the crow Corbassière place
with a lot of them
come down from the trees
and get to know you
the dark of other people’s lives
the shame of living
where so many didn’t and Abbot Guarinus
fell from his horse right there and died

nine hundred years before her
right over the pommel
the saddle fell with him
some monks were mournful
carried here him north to the abbey
he had founded
the lepers were kept up the steep path
up Corba’s hill
everything intimate and sly
the way death operates

Bernard hated the place
but preached Jerusalem anyhow
got away as soon as he could
mistakes of weather
that summer hail the size of pippins
fell Crusaders left
Marlene betrothed in Canada
everybody becomes opera
made of everything a cup of tea
on fire in spirit sleep

the angelus woke him as if
he were a village itself
but nobody is anybody really
just numbers in a jar
with a few long wing feathers floating past
to make apparent identity remember
palpable entity
but he had no right to talk
about Parmenides

rescuing sleepy children
from a burning orphanage
itself the most remarkable structure
in the hamlet
they came there to ride horses
and to sleep the long
sweet sweaty sleep of horses
till fire found them
and no child tried to understand
a few of the thoughtful

read books about the catastrophe
in which they died
as if memory could be anything
recovered out of nowhere
by impudent imposture of consciousness
a written word
face pressed against her breast
where playful dragons sleep
and every pool a wishing well
they bend to read their fate

fact is fate every water’s ink
nothing to do with Parmenides
Rossini is closer nothing to do with anything
but the Old Mill
sea marsh the Jews of this man’s head
and one of them uphill
stumbling rock road and what she did was dry
the face to this day she sits beside
the road the napkin in her lap

an action is permanent things are not permanent
terrible history of to do and the shame of not
having a cabin full of crystals
and not having a bathroom
full of sea foam and a bed full of mermaids
with nacre
not having name in lights
not even having lights

no name and pronouns too dear that season
to make sense
Arabic easier a gesture write a whole word
in the air
God made them as they did
why should a priest go to Québec
and bother half-breeds and Iroquois
about a soul they share
portage over thickets of indifference
to the dry martini of belief

no question really asks itself
it needs accomplices
buses to the lake lost mail
a phone call in the night
one had not heard the donkey bray
civilian light
reformation light Waldensian light
down this valley once
voodoo light every heart carried
that desire carries

wanting is the worst and most of magic
a postcard
from a pretty city on the shores of hell
everyone arrives
and no one sleeps a nightingale
singing in the emergency room
blood smells like copper
copper smells like money
money smells like sex

fear is general among the living
that’s how the dead are different
all desire and no fear not even fear
of not getting what is desired
no more than a stone
can be disappointed
the dead get everything
hours later ran still on the mountain
the stone cross wet

+

after this comes that and after that
a mulberry and after that the ivy hurries
up the wall and children
and so forth and the name of this is Time
a hollow raucous teens at the foot
of the same cross pray for night
and all things cover them
they are simple with fear

and where does the mountain go
to flee human weather
fear is everywhere and it loves them
too maite zaitut
a kind of game to play with lakes and rivers
walking in the rain to La Moussière
pursued by bells
the natives of this little town
are called ‘wolves’

respectable as eggwhite like a blue policeman
red republican procurer of indigent luxuries
an earth to sleep on and stars for a hat
truth is yellow truth likes to get hurt
because then the lonely world turns opposite

and one know where one is
and is not Parmenides
who was that Parmenos he was son of
nobody is anybody’s son it’s all a daughter
a kind of island wine and kiss the sailor
the lamb sleeps in the cottage shadow
on some moss

+

nix nihil nivis umbrae on the mountain
don’t confuse a word with a preposition
shadows on mountain statue
of General Dessaix
things stand for what they are is not
a proposition
a rime with calico an old woman in church

that much is clear the church was empty
the holy water stoups were dry the cooper
image of the saint is gone it’s raining
no car to go home the city by the lake
where Lakota war dances get big crowds
o god the grief of sunshine
sad eagle feather
the claws of what we do the broken axle
the bent wheel rolling down the arm
nobody can suffer weather like a lake
it’s dreaming women wake in lightning

echo of a dance that passed one footstep
into heaven
a wolf looking in from the woods
so many explanations
all it really is is whatever anybody says
it is isn’t it
since no one’s listening
salvation is not susceptible
to proof or demonstration
but the candle burns

kids play in the confessional
rehearsing sins
they’d like to do or are doing
as they speak
performing and absolving in one gesture
and the dry old wood keeps creaking
the substances of things
are the only answer

who’s there? the light asks who’s asking
says the dark and off they go again
wind down the valley and the girl cries
shadows of snow the dawn light caught
on the massif the breathing of the light

before the sun takes hold
an hour from the world
over the neighbor mountain a dance?
a Dante?
dark pink roses round
the abandoned convent
a sacred heart above
the rose-embattled door
and that man who shows his heart
has roses too

but no one’s home pull back
from that knocker
the echoes of such a house
will slay the unprepared
the men-at-arms are far away
the blue lights of their car
hurtling down the cliffside road in rain
and one is alone with the door
that one has found

+

be normal maiden samphire
semaphore club moss ruta
graveolens heavy-reeking rue
spinnaker stands out from Thonon
republic at home with lakes
les foulques come swim with us

Voughà shi no the sign says
least chance for meaning
all day the difference dances

wanderfrei unsalted egg
of a pastor without sheep
have fun with us it means

but no one’s speaking
so nothing to know a nail
a board a brass band

chervil and leeks are close
coffee cool enough to drink
a peppermill for the pope

smooth cry willow jay
a horse just happens
a stream of travelers

vanishes in the woods
what does the eagle care
he’s written his book

in splendor the darkness
sleeps inside the light
the word forgives its mouth.


13 August 2004

Saint Jean d’Aulps


Robert Kelly

Posted over on one of his sites RK-ology