One fine fall dawn,
having had my breakfast
and performed my daybreak ablutions,
I walked
to work.
On my way
I chanced
To look up
from the gravel
and I saw
an immaculate man
plummeting
from a tall
building.
How did this defenestration develop?
Some catastrophic accident?
Did he decide
on suicide
by fast descent?
Is it possible
he was pushed?
Did God
catch him?
Was he snatched
from the air
at the last
instant?
Did he suddenly
acquire ailerons
and glide like an aviator
to alight lightly
on the city terrain?
I do not know.
I turned my gaze away
before impact.
I prefer
to remember him thus:
In midair
rather
than
as
a
broken
splash
smashed
against
the
cracked
and
patched
black
asphalt
below.
 |
| Yves Klein - Leap Into the Void, 1960 |
This is a wonderful poem that meshes perfectly with the photo.
ReplyDeleteThanks Max! I had a small physical copy of this photo in the bathroom in the first apartment I had (long long time ago now). It got lost somewhere along the way, probably I gave it to someone who liked it or something. I found myself thinking about it a few days ago and was delighted when I managed to track it down online in spite of forgetting the artist's name!
DeleteWas "daybreak ablutions" meant to evoke a religious vibe? It did for me but I can't tell if it's intentional bc the activator was kinda weird and specific. When I was growing up, my folks kept a Qur'an around (one of many) that used the old Pickthall translation. The Pickthall trans. is part of that grand and noble heritage of making religious texts sound like the King James Bible - frex, the Throne Verse in the relatively sedate Abdul Haleem trans. goes:
ReplyDelete"God: there is no god but Him, the Ever Living, the Ever Watchful. Neither slumber nor sleep overtakes Him. All that is in the heavens and in the earth belongs to Him. Who is there that can intercede with Him except by His leave?..." and so on
…while the Throne Verse in Pickthall's Qur'an goes like:
"ALLAH! There is no deity save Him, the Alive, the Eternal. Neither slumber nor sleep overtaketh Him. Unto Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who is he that intercedeth with Him save by His leave?!..."
It's kinda awesome. I love the KJV style and the Pickthall trans. brings its own flair to it. It's also cool as a piece of history, Marmaduke Pickthall was a really interesting dude. Anyways, one thing that stuck with me is the constant use of the word ablution. Like, not even just for things like wudu where it makes sense, but for the dust washing that replaces wudu, for the oil of the blessed tree parable, etc. The guy just liked the word ig.
Sometimes I feel like the use of weird layout in poems can wind up more gimmicky than experimental but this feels like neither, more a natural outgrowth of the picture. "I turned my gaze away" is the fulcrum of the piece for me, even though it comes right before the shift, or maybe because of that. Great work as usual, fam - ekphrastic poetry is dead no more!
Oh interesting! No, it was not intended that way here - it was more an "economy of language" decision - as an image I didn't think it was particularly strong, but I felt like it covered everything from slapping a little water on your face and heading out the door all the way through to taking a shower, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, blah blah in one word. The other reason I chose it was to begin a pattern of assonant "a" sounds that (I hope) intensifies as the poem goes on, mirroring the fall - the scream on the way down and then a (again I hope) sudden release of tension at the bottom / last word. But I think this gets at least a little to the weakness of authorial intent - individual readers will (hopefully) take away something meaningful to themselves if the work resonates with them, so if "ablutions" resonated with you in a certain way, that's all I can ask!
DeleteYeah, I'm not generally a fan of odd layout either, though I willingly admit I have a certain weakness for e.e. cummings and I enjoyed the hell out of House of Leaves. It felt like it worked here, and hopefully it would work even without the photo. The form is meant (again) to echo what is happening in the poem to an extent, with the "in midair" very deliberately separated from the rest of the lines and the single word per line thing at the end mimicking the actual descent. An attempt to unify content, form, and sound, I guess.
Thanks for reading, sir! Now, it sounds like I have to learn a bit about Marmaduke Pickthall!