remains.
MARK STRAND
I
Lose me as you lost your cat, your bearings, your wherewithal, your identity. Lose me as you lose autumn each year to ice, as you lose a year each year. Lose me as you lose a little weight and your bones show. Lose me like a wet food dropped face down. Both earrings. Any key. Lose me like what blew off the ferry. Lose me like the dollhouse furniture you kept since childhood and in adulthood misplaced while moving. Lose me like your prize mountain you saw once and can’t remember where it was, what country. Lose me the way you lose fog. Lose me and fuck you.
I am the field that cannot comprehend itself after the fog has cleared and it is only itself again. I am the fog that has cleared. I am the cleanest, smallest, emptiest land mammal and I am fast. I am not waiting for anyone to come. Take your years, your rituals, your favorites and your signs, I have none of you. I give you entirely back to yourself and I know that is more than you want.
It is completely sacred to lose something you never needed.
The anger that takes your place is red and unnecessary but I’ll lose it too in turn and then only my nonphysical self will fill up my physical self, I’ll be exactly my whole size. I will not be 40 percent you.
It’s March again, last year on this date you analyzed my oaks, time circles but it does not repeat, March again but no oaks. It is up to me to do something today that I might like to recall on this date next year. You are no longer my marker of time.
I regret your bloodlessness, your peace, your instruction, your friendship, your hair, your socks I never saw.
I want to be your nothing, to occur to you only as an unknown, for your only thought of me to be wonder, not wonder as awe but as an absolute lack of information.
Not to impress, not to receive your approval your interest or your disdain, total blankness, which is not to say that we are strangers, it is to say that we have fallen from each other’s grace.
Some things are just very large parts of your life, and not your life.
If you change your life it changes. I changed my life and it changed. My life did not assert itself (or it did, as pain) or hold fast or keep shape.
I have only ever been a crayon.
The hymn says: I am like one who has been anointed.
The train says: Stand clear of the closing doors.
HILDEGARD
Hildegard von Bingen, you prophet, you doctor, you abbess, you hearer of music, you daughter of the Nahe River, you daughter of Hildebert, you ward of Jutta the sister of Count Meginhard, you wearer of the habit of a nun, you favorite of the monk Godfrey and the abbot Conon, you articulator of the cosmos that holds humanity between thumb and forefinger, you composer of canticles, you creator of nine hundred words, you baker of spelt bread, you will be my new Joan.
I dedicate this third notebook to you and I take your teachings as its start. I couldn’t keep up with things the way they were. I couldn’t keep up with Joan. I couldn’t keep up with my so-called self. I couldn’t even maintain my own system. I saw Joan’s tongue in Tom’s mouth and forgot the foods, my favorite, and collapsed without thinking into cop-outs like Leather, Time, Love? As if Love had anything to do with what happened in the arms of Joan’s swivel chair. No more monikers, euphemisms. In this book we go back to ourselves. I am Nell. You are Hildegard.
You say,
Peas make a person courageous.
Eating watercress is not of much use or much harm to a person.
When eaten, parsnip only fills the person’s stomach.
I say, give me peas.
You say,
In whatever way it is eaten, fennel makes a person happy.
In whatever way it is eaten, dill makes a person sad.
In whatever way it is eaten, celery induces a wandering mind since its greenness sometimes harms and makes the person sad with instability.
I say, I have eaten enough celery for four lifetimes and let the fifth be flavored by fennel. I say, enough dill.
You say,
Chick-peas are warm and gentle.
Bitter vetch is not very suitable as a medicine.
I say, indeed.
You say,
If a person goes out of his or her mind as if they know nothing and are lying deranged in ecstasy,