Sea Change by Jorie Graham

Author:Jorie Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins

THE VIOLINIST AT THE WINDOW, 1918

(after Matisse)

Here he is again, so thin, unbent, one would say captive—did winter ever leave—no one has climbed the hill north of town in longer than one can remember—something hasn’t been fully loaded—life is blameless—he is a stem—& what here is cyclic, we would so

need to know

about now—& if there is

a top to this—a summit, the highest note, a

destination—

here he is now, again, standing at the window, ready to

look out if asked to

by his

time,

ready to take up again if he

must, here where the war to end all wars has come

to an end—for a while—to take up whatever it is

the spirit

must take up, & what is the melody of

that, the sustained one note of obligatory

hope, taken in, like a virus,

before the body grows accustomed to it and it

becomes

natural again—yes breathe it in,

the interlude,

the lull in the

killing—up

the heart is asked to go, up—

open these heavy shutters now, the hidden order of a belief system

trickles to the fore,

it insists you draw closer to

the railing—lean out—

time stands out there as if mature, blooming, big as day—& is this not an emaciated

sky, & how

thin is this

sensation of time, do you

not feel it, the no in the heart—no, do not make me believe

again, too much has died, do not make me open this

all up

again—crouching in

shadow, my head totally

empty—you can see

the whole sky pass through this head of mine, the mind is hatched and scored by clouds

and weather—what is weather—when it’s

all gone we’ll

buy more,

heaven conserve us is the song, & lakes full of leaping

fish, & ages that shall not end, dew-drenched, sun-

drenched, price-

less—leave us alone, loose and undone, everything

and nothing slipping through—no, I cannot be reached, I cannot be duped again says

my head standing now in the

opened-up window, while history starts up again, &

is that flute music in the

distance, is that an answering machine—call and response—& is that ringing in my ears

the furrows of earth

full of men and their parts, & blood as it sinks into

loam, into the page of statistics, & the streets out there, shall we really

be made to lay them out again, & my plagiarized

humanity, whom

shall I now imitate to re-

become

before the next catastrophe—the law of falling bodies applies but we shall not use

it—the law of lateness—

even our loved ones don’t know if we’re living—

but I pick it up again, the

violin, it is

still here

in my left hand, it has been tied to me all this long time—I shall hold it, my

one burden, I shall hear the difference between up

and

down, & up we shall bring the bow now up &

down, & find

the note, sustained, fixed, this is what hope forced upon oneself by one’s self sounds

like—this high note trembling—it is a

good sound, it is an

ugly sound, my hand is doing this, my mind cannot

open—cloud against sky, the freeing of my self

from myself, the note is that, I am standing in

my window, my species is ill, the

end of the world can be imagined, minutes run away like the pattering of feet in summer

down the long hall then out—oh be happy, &

clouds

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