denis roche - from les idées centesimales


longing to be caught again in these eddies
in the poem where a fell roller door
leaves us daunted and apart, but i prefer to talk.
riff-raff forever! (say after me), hold out
your arms like a sleepwalker so nothing will break
the silence. then rub the moles on the forehead of the haruspex
out of which dear memories stream
and glance the edges of houses or gangways
that really are these vanished words:
“would that i’d come in this fountain (ssssschwoossssh!)
or on this languorous balcony (what a sight)
under the family tower saddled with the uncreated
tendrils of an uncrossed season… i long to
sink or rappel again into that quit being.”
me, i cry over my spilt violence, long aloof
and coming like the tax on the dead.