Toward a Catalogue of Falling
Towards a Catalogue
of Falling
Méira Cook
Brick Books
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Cook, Méira, 1964-
Toward a catalogue of falling
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-771310-96-3
1. Title.
PS8555.0567T68 1996 C811'.54 C96-931595-3
PR9199.3.C66T68 1996
Copyright © Méira Cook, 1996.
The support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts
Council is gratefully acknowledged.
Cover is after a photograph by the author.
Brick Books
Box 20081
431 Boler Road
London, Ontario
N6K 4G6
Canada
www.brickbooks.ca
To my parents, Chana and Chonie
and to Aviva
Contents
Diptych I
Diptych II
Legends of Tongue
In Pendulum of Green
Too Ripe for Skin
Legends of Tongue
Slip of the Tongue I
Slip of the Tongue II
Slip of the Tongue III
Last Fall
The Ruby Garrote
gaudy she stands on one leg
petco the ringmaster stares at the world
rosie envies the stability of tables
the clowns are dying all over the world
rosie hunkers in her body
the beast has found me out at last
you are going to have to let
always announced in the dark
let's us two go halvsies
amongst her mirrors my lady
four lions trained but not tamed
The Fallen Here
Fairytales from the Old Country
Any Old Skin
Fooling the Jasmine
The Fallen Here
Such a Long Way
String Quartet
Prima parte moderato
Seconda parte allegro
Recapitulazione della prima parte moderato
Coda legato molto
Days of Water
For Breath & Glass
All Day
When you open a door in a street
Here in Venice
Toward a Catalogue of Falling
Vertical cities
Some Place
Epigrams for Breath & Glass
Elsewhere
Light, moving
Worn Through
Various Blues
Into Category
Water, falling
Reading Oranges
Following Herself
Triptych
Rumours of Bear
Like Rain
Bestiary in Three Parts
Diptych I
According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring.
William Carlos Williams
Perhaps it is always spring
when we fall.
The first is easy, a gush
of green the blood
rising in high chambers
like sap. It is the other
that confounds
the falling.
To fall
in love asleep downstairs
of those three I have fallen
twice. The one is gentle
a laying on of hands, the other
hard my body clicking
open and shut, a turnstile.
But I have never fallen
as Icarus
from grace.
Poor Icarus who suffered
from hubris and oedipus
in equal measure, now
there is a fall for you.
Imagine wanting to please
daddy and snub god
at the same time.
No wonder he spun
into that blank ocean wax
dripping from the blades
of shoulders, legs scissoring
the seam of sea and sky.
But it was spring when Icarus
fell
in love asleep downstairs
and out of the sky.
We have his legs to remember this by.
Diptych II
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance; how everything
turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster.
W. H. Auden
I turn and walk (quite leisurely)
from the canvas by
that mocking passionate com-
passionate man who painted
lepers and whores, burghermen
tax-collectors and fishwives
wet-lashed cripples
on the margins of the crowd
feast days and plunderings
interchangeably and the odd
rape as well as a pair
of well-shaped calves
kicking out negligently
from a painted ocean.
I turn and walk
away, you turn
with me the guard
who has been examining
your well-shaped calves
turns the better to hide
his wet-lashed eyes.
I turn you turn he
turns, behind
our turned backs
two well-shaped calves
kick out negligently
from a painted ocean.
Legends of Tongue
In Pendulum of Green
At the parabola of day
in the garden's thickest
pause, girl swings in pendulum of
green too deep for colour green
is sound, a gush of leaves
cells fractured in light.
Close your eyes against the sun
watch the skin imprinted red
on the filter of your eye feel
desire deep as colour, here red
is disease heatsickness home
sickness and the slick unease of
love in a red country green as blood
girl rocks herself over the hump
of midday while the garden
brawls in shadow while the sun
flowers in root of eye.
Swing high swing low she sings
her soul's pale exile from this
bright gash of earth. Here fruit
and dust and snake is red,
spider and tongue and nail and
word. Only memory is green
a garden, and dies every year.
Too Ripe for Skin
The smell of ferment is a colour also
on the inside of colour, the ooze
of plums too ripe for their skins
heatblown in dust at the garden's
meridian. Sun pours us out honey
sluggish in slow time, already
ants crawl in the crevice of toes.
I have eaten myself fat on
the garden, sun sops me up olive
oil soaked through bread. It was
you who said, too ripe for skin.
Put the garden to your ear, listen.
The ferment of things grown to seed
and rot is colour also. The suck
slide of worm through cavities
of earth of flesh, maggot colour
rainbows in the bowels blooms
buds and blows in the eye.
Unzip unzip, there is a catch
between my thighs here let me
uncolour myself for you, peel
my legs like stockings.
Legends of Tongue
Caged behind teeth tongue outpaces
her captivity in words, stories
herself pliant and profane, squawks
the dark world to tattletale and rag
first
was the world the edible garden, then
snake wriggled south leaving word only
of scales gathering in the place of
god, a language grown to the girth of
trees
also stars.
Words branched and antlered
fall to furrow two by two, it was
the catalogue that arked them in the
end
against the grind of Ararat. No loss
of creature fossilled in print not
gone if one slant letter arched in sky
remains.
Slip of the Tongue I
If you want to catch wolf first
take your hunting knife, rub grease
on the blade. Wolf will come cut
her tongue to the root taste the
blood, sucksuck at her own salt
source, greedy for the insides
of things. A trackless pacing
wells slowly to the throat is
swallowed in one gulp wolf drinks
wolf, pours her body clotted out
cup and knife will serve you well
if you want to catch wolf. Look
how she lies mouth open tongue
dry at last, she has swallowed
herself twice already gnawed
down to the quick to the nub
to the root of tongue. There is
another trick to be learnt
if you want to catch crow.
Slip of the Tongue II
If you want to catch crow first
whispers crow.