a soft vivid order
BENJAMIN ON THE SPANISH FRONTIER
By: Mark Sargent
Every situation has its own equilibrium
that passes swifter than love, than air,
shreds of lesser life left in a mouth of wind.
*
Coming into the dark he shrank
his ambition down to pocket lint
and fingered it there.
*
She punched buttons from a childhood sequence,
a soft vivid order that opened the floor to reveal
lizards in the shape of horses galloping, rearing and galloping.
*
Don’t blink, she said, don’t move, don’t think.
Push your fingers into the floor. Harder.
Feel the current of stampede.
*
It is so, she said, Knausgaardian.
I can’t quite bear it. That’s how irresistible
the deluge of detail becomes.
*
A Libyan gift,
sky dense with Saharan sand
darkens the Lakonian Spring.
*
Nobody knows where the melted cores are.
Not even Caroline Kennedy can find them.
Our heroines are prostituted before our eyes.
*
Landing on the fucking moon barefoot,
lunar dust exploding up between your toes,
earth rising from the Sea of Tranquility.
*
It clogs the life, thickens, so no more memory,
just honey from the bottom, from the deep bee
who works the rosemary relentlessly.
*
At 91 “…blessed with old age”
surrounded by family
Ruby Dee dies peacefully.
*
Afternoon of a groan,
heat yawns through blue to
our faux twilight shadow sanctuary.
26 June 2014
Love this. Can’t make that much sense of it, but as a whole it is “a soft vivid order” to feel, see, and remember. “He shrank his ambition down to pocket lint and fingered it there” has special resonance for me. Something so petty yet a remnant of many things opens up–in the poem to “Push your fingers into the floor. Harder. Feel the current of stampede.” “That’s how irresistible the deluge of detail becomes.” Indeed!