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Poetry by Louis E. Bourgeois
Homage to Søren Kierkegaard
When you
died,
the druggist
hammered out his potions,
a peasant girl gathered
hay at the edge of a field–
flute music faded
through the square,
and a cock crowed at
Father of
nothingness
and dawn mist,
you knew all things
lay beyond the horizon
where winter always is.
Remind
us, Father,
of the ice flowers,
of the small things,
the gulls flying
out of the fog,
the sea surf,
and how Christ
never stops bleeding
the infinite, the blue.
On Bayou Sauvage
Martins
dive from my memory
and into their nest in the rafters
of the boat shed.
Old
men fish on the wharves,
telling lies to themselves
and each other.
In
August, mosquitoes and gnats
come in clouds
from the rozo
cane
along Bayou Sauvage.
Gulls
and hawks climb
to their apex of sky.
Scores
of mullet swim
below osprey and fish crows.
Barges
putter by, heading to
their waves jostling
the water lilies.
For a
moment, the water is still
and a voice calls from the cane.
With
a clam shell, on a dusty culvert,
I'm
trying to write my name
which no one has taught me to spell.
Fragment of a Life
Thirty-Two Years Gone
A
voice calls through the dust.
My
childhood is out there
and I'm here gathering limbs
at the edge of a field.
I
think: there is no one like me.
No
one has walked in the same places,
seen the same quail disappear beyond
the hill's ridge. No one has seen
the same shadows in the same way.
And
the dead that I know, in their
stone tombs, remember me the way
I
was. They see the same color,
experience the same light. I am here
forever, always, looking from the same
face.
Clear Thoughts in
the Middle of My 33rd Year
One
day you’ll wake up
in this blue room,
and all will be as shadows,
shadows upon a wall.
Outside
the window,
the flowers will turn purple,
and the dog barking
at the edge of town
will lie down and be silent.
The
chairs, the books, the tables,
the lamps and clocks
will consume you,
as they mutter their one coherent
message
in your mother tongue:
le monde n’existe
pas,
nous ne sommes jamais nes.
In a Field Near
Silence. A scarecrow
flickers in the wind.
The corn is dead. Geese speckle the horizon,
followed by crows and herons.
The evening
is dark as it is long.
A man walks in the
distance and disappears.
Another man
calls his dog which has run out of sight.
Dust settles on the
road. Above, the distant
cries of the geese.
I walk toward the car,
camera in hand, not having the nerve to take a shot.
At Age Thirty-Two
Year after year the road home
grows
darker and darker,
and it
gets harder to keep
your
feet from leaving the ground.
The lights at a distance
only
remind you how
close
you are to nothing.
The wind through the pines
is a
memory of something
lost,
the earth keeps spinning
you
round and round, until
you are
merely a speck on the horizon.
Clover begins to open under moonlight,
and on
the way home, the dead wife
in the
cemetery decomposes,
and you
do not weep.
The Shed: The
Daughter of Shadows Speaks
from Max Beckmann's The Dream (1921)
1.
Father holds the fish
without hands.
His parted hair
reveals dead eyes.
His prisoner's suit
was bought in the fish market--
where his hands were amputated for stealing a carp.
He stands suspended
in the air, looking down on us.
2.
My uncle plays a
thick trumpet and laughs between notes.
He wears sandwich
boards all day long in the streets,
but he does not beg, his pockets are always empty.
His blue sandals do
not become him, and he laughs.
His name is Joseph,
and he only speaks Hebrew at night.
3.
Mother does not have
all her bones.
Her legs are sieves
of flesh, folded at right angles.
The wheat grinder has
taken her soul.
She smells of
creosote and crabs,
her eyes are blackened and her hair thin.
4.
Mother holds the
monkey in one hand,
in the other, the parrot, taken from the town's arbor.
They speak to each
other, the three of them,
they speak with soft tongues and liquid breath.
The dialog destroys
Mother, the monkey and parrot know this.
5.
Grandmother's head is
gray and bald.
She wears a crimson
clown's suit that
stretches across her buttocks and down
to her missing feet, capped in yellow plastic.
The monkey is a
constant whorl in her dark eyes.
6.
A chinaman's smile holds my brother's face together.
He wears a striped
skirt with green stockings.
A bronze cane and a
broken violin keep him company.
He has no love for
the parrot, whose language he loathes.
My brother's
blindness has revealed nothing to him.
7.
I am the daughter
existing in the shadows of the room.
With my three fingers
I write only what I see.
My legs are severely
twisted, I cannot leave the shed.
If there were a window,
I could see the herons feeding
in the mud, and the dark geese diminishing beyond the mountains.
Walking
The sky a deepest
gray, but moves slowly, slowly. I keep
tempting myself with these lonely streets, to wander and die.
The lights are on in
the temple. God is absent, but ash
still lingers thick in the air. Emerald smoke streams
out of manholes and drifts forever like dissolving
spirits
into the bronchial limbs of dark oaks and maples.
I stand against the
temple. All my life I've worn black
for Him, and He does not respond. Thoughts linger for
too long,
thoughts of childhood in
in the dry ditches.
Armadillo and nutria bones.
For too long I have
lived in a world that doesn't know my name.
The sky is mauve now,
and I pass the shops. Plastic heads
displayed,
and even more lifeless, the people, looking into windows
of empty dreams.
I walk faster, and the
wind against my back reminds me of home--
some thirty years ago, still whimpering in the womb. They plan
executions better than they prepare for all who enter and stay
lonely forever. A
light is being snuffed out in my mouth.
The sky is black now
and has quit moving. Keep thinking
of the hills, I whisper, and the mesmerizing geese that
always
flew too high above the blind, and the perpetually grey
father
smoking cigars and drinking whisky, muttering back then too
much into my
ears than was good for me. Remember the fields, I whisper,
and the blue and white herons that flew up before you
and disappeared.
After
At this time next year
you'll be dead.
And the crows
will fly over you
and anoint you.
The wind will
blow right through you.
Rocks will lie
scattered on the ground
and engines will break
down and women will
fix their hair.
Sunset
No one in the house but me
yet
someone is whispering in tongues.
Outside the window, birds sing
in
perfect meter but make no sense.
Skiffs rock restlessly and gulls
shriek
above the house. Fig trees
waiting
to be picked stand against
a back-lit
sky of ochre and crimson.
A bell chimes from across the lake
reminding
me how little there is to say.
Evening Girl
Stars eat your
body and the wind makes you cold.
- Leonard Cohen
I see her walking at
the edge of the field,
another footstep and she'll be gone,
absorbed by trees and sky.
A voice calls from a
great distance.
The pines stand still
in a purple silence,
as if the world awaited their
whispers in order to go on.
She walks back across
the plain.
Twilight bats and
swifts fill the sky.
She stumbles along
the way,
stunned by what she saw on the horizon.
The wooden sheep are in the yard.
The black oaks with their gnarling
limbs begin to appear.
Nuns gaze into the dark morning sky,
stars and moon fade away.
The wind is thick with pine and
creosote,
And the dust lies heavy on the road
to the school.
The nuns whisper prayers in the
morning chill.
Each bows her head, year after darkening year.
1.
I am still
here--listening, forever,
to What-Never-Was--in the
tall grass.
2.
No one knows your name,
anymore.
The lovers have disowned
you.
You wife is forever
faceless.
3.
Her life consumes her;
she
eats the fig she found along
the way.
4.
No one loved him. He walked the streets
muttering his name, over and
over.
5.
I hear the distance of
darkness--
some dog at the edge of
sound,
some rooster crowing under
moonlight.
6.
An old lady still lives
in the house.
Alone,
with her tomahawks and gum trees.
7.
He rests--he rests in
his tomb.
Silver women put him
there.
8.
Utterance: Lucidity.
Lucidity.
Lucidity.
Lucidity.
9.
Gray goats on the
hill--heads bent down
and blue flies in the air.
The Return
I return to the pine trees of my youth.
The world here is still the same.
I don't know why I'm here.
I turn the corner toward
the
cypress,
Arcadian architecture,
azaleas
along the ditch.
Someone else lives there now.
But I'm thirty years old this weekend
with
few regrets,
and
time heals the worst misgivings.
I didn't come here to be angry.
I came
to
watch the dust blow from the road.
I came back to see
the
pine trees,
to
visit
an old
live oak
that I
wrote my first poem to.
I came back to walk in the fields,
to see
how the shadows
still
fall.
I came back to hear the crows
and
watch them
fly
into the sky.
I came back because I'm
in love
with myself here.