BY JAN HAAG
FROSTY MOURNING
01-30-00
For Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham
O Devayani,
looking, with blankness, into the void,
you've been
losing weight lately.
Such unbelievable good luck!
but you live,
always, just behind
the edge
of terror.
Reading this morning,
The Hours,
watching for twinges of the belly,
small dashes of pain,
aches,
unusual feelings,
suddenly,
faintly,
you hear
static.
A continuation of sounds in the night?
Motors running,
mouse rustlings?
Surely not static from a stomach.
Again!
O
my God! static in the stomach?
Like a... O, Devayani
you'd forgotten
to turn off
the radio the proper way.
No static in the flat,
slimming
stomach,
nothingness,
Not even hunger.
There's
almost a shame in writing,
in calling it poetry.
Ennui rests in your
chest,
like white frost on the lawn.
Seattle's winter with
sunshine
is so unutterably beautiful
one must walk in the wind, in
the park.
Storms at sea beyond sunshine,
driving the crows and
the gulls
to flock in the big empty spaces --
but no! O no... a
woman
scattering grains, kernels:
the birds flocking,
fluttering
and quarreling.
Probably no storm at sea.
Only in
your heart, the turmoil
of ennui, of
lassitude,
nothingness.
Age. American life slimming
down.
Your life slimming down.
What's the point of writing?
Park
walking is the goal.
Invisible static from the
stars,
from the constellation called God --
static, making you
adhere
like paper bits to a comb,
O Devayani,
looking, with
blankness, into the void,
you've been losing weight lately.
You'll
soon have to dig nails
into the clouds, grab unto
the winter,
the
branches.
Reading this morning, The Hours,
watching for twinges
of the belly,
you wonder if a gull might have got you,
or crumbs
from a lady's charity.
Age? Invisible static from the stars?
Or
continuations
of sounds from the night?
Copyright © 2000 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
Etruscan Goddess
Father
Feeding Frenzy
Gifts
India
Interstellar Space, 7-5-97
Lung-gom-pas
Micro Paleontology
Nothing
Point of View, 7-5-97
The Roaring Silence of God, 4-3-95
Roots
Ryoanji
Silence
Solstice, 12-21-97
Steady Drizzle
Two Tomatoes
BY JAN HAAG