A week, a year, whatever
i.
So many
have
started
out from silence
but I will start
from
something else
like
maybe the sprawl
of this afternoon.
ii.
After all
it really
has everything
in it:
a tree, some noise
of cars
and not
so long ago
lunch.
iii.
For the longest time
I worried
people
would come
up over
the wall
and
get me
but I don’t
worry about that
anymore
even as I speak
a column of silica
is blowing over
Europe
and all that
seems to matter
are
the cancelled flights
I’m not even sure
this goal
getting
the point
of view
which would be
truly
detached
from
our own
self-interest
is
desirable
but still
from time
to time
I wish we’d try
always to deny
the angelic
in
our nature
seems
to be
the only role
someone decided
to leave the poets
well
whoever they
were
I never met
them
and their dicta
carry small weight
with me
no, I think
the wall
will hold
just fine
and if
it doesn’t
let them
come.
iv.
In the street
it is
time for
the children
to be picked up
from school
they
will all go
home
or more
likely
(it is sunny
today
like it hasn’t
been
in weeks)
to a park
but one of the
boys
is crying.
v.
This funny thing
happened
then
I went
up
on
the roof
and a
strong wind
picked up
just as
the restaurant
switched off
their
extractor fan
so one sound
stopped
when
the other
began
and the wind
carried off
the cooking smells
and
tossed them
with
the cumulus.
vi.
So you see, there really is everything.
…
teeth shook and jasmine
my teeth shook in
my skull and jasmine
edged distantly
it was far and away
the best we’d known
it incomparable
afternoon within a
mediocre year you
suggested a picnic
I stripped off
there & then celadon
sky and similar sea
and so much summer
to get ourselves into
cars like vultures
circling like
no tomorrow as if
no not like that
tutors rather
the learning curve
or the way a runner
bean turns to grip
and matte paint on
sun-ladened walls
while everywhere
else is elsewhere
music of intimate
and anecdotal
life stuff she
screamed and
screamed and
no-one came the
day advanced
towards its horrible
end and anodyne
matter meant more
and more honey
suckle leaves
yellow and fall
and a tongue thick
from menthols dabs
at dry lips
…
Drunken bride
I had tried so many different things,
tried everything
but the fire wouldn’t take;
the Christmas tree I had hacked to pieces
on the 6th of January in my 33rd year
then left for a month
to dry, sap forming beads
on the branches’ cut ends
(crown of studs
around a breast)
was fed into the chimney
as kindling;
the oil
in its needles fizzed
and the flames
reached up and round
the bought logs from the hardware store
and smelt as though the Seneca were blessing me with sage,
and died;
a friend said it was to do
with air: air
that needs to circulate
freely for fire
to burn,
so I propped
the logs on other logs
right-angled
to give them height
and the air space,
like the sky
which Hopkins
held his hand
up into
and saw the mother of God in,
to move around in and make
in moving
but the coals and twigs,
the little wood
burnt red hot and brilliant
and the big wood
wouldn’t take.
I tried toxic stuff:
wrapping paper,
paper bags,
chopsticks,
detritus,
turned my living room to landfill,
billows spilling out and upwards,
staining
the artwork, shortening our lives;
I asked professional advice and learnt
that the very manufacture
of the fireplace might be at fault,
that it might be too high for its width or depth
or any other of those two by three equations;
something, warmed to this idea
the architect in (the poet in) me,
and like chess I experimented,
logs back
middle
and forth
hung flaps of cardboard
from the mantel
piece’s lip; surelevated the whole show
on a grill, as if if one could get the setting right,
the rest,
like modernist Utopias
or a barrow boy in a Savile Row suit
would all just fall into place.
I tried other woods, I blew and fanned,
I opened doors and windows and froze,
the goal of warmth forgotten in the quest:
to make at least a small place work,
and a void consume indefinitely
but it wouldn’t take,
no matter what,
& the skinny flame
flickered
like a
drunken
bride.
…
© Rufo Quintavalle
Three poems selected from Weather Derivatives (Eyewear Publishing 2014), a fleshy, bleak and tragicomic romp through a world of financial meltdown and ecological degradation. It pulls together five years of work, some of which has been previously published and some of which is appearing in print for the first time. Though written in Paris this collection travels widely in both the real and the imagined worlds and seeks stylistically to position itself in mid-Atlantic between two traditions, the British and the American, that all too often fail to converse.
Born in London in 1978, studied at Oxford and the University of Iowa, and lives in Paris where he is active in the field of environmental impact investing. He is the author of several chapbooks, the most recent of which,moral hazard and the chemical sweats was published by corrupt press in 2013. He was formerly poetry editor for the award winning webzine, Nthposition, and served on the editorial board for the Paris-based literary journal Upstairs at Duroc. He is currently working on a collaboration for cello and voice with the British composer James Weeks.
You can view his blog here: http://rufoquintavalle.blogspot.fr
