| The Poetry of Richard Sansom Published by The British Sansom Society | |
 
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| e meglio una volta che mai (A Partially Burned Letter and Ida's Poetry) August 1985 Dear Ida and then you said by the sea where we once wondered about that day that old lady, do you remember you said the chocolate was so sweet we shared a tiny piece the awful colors of that and the waiters -- God! Weren't they on the white linen table cloths, you said something about the silver pictures all lost -- doesn't that seem ironic? All our photos gone, and The canal was brown and so muddy-- that's all I remember about it, but you went on and on, and the little boats lovers, I guess trying to kiss without over turning but I'll be back soon, and leaves at 6:35. You know how much I dislike go to sleep after a little Scotch? know that my love is not red, rose, but like fire the sun (September 1985) My mask has fallen away, slipped from my face like a snakeskin falls in its season to fall. But where is it written that I should fall, that my sun should vanish in an eclipse of permanence, that all the phantoms of my dreams should rise up, sounding out memories like choruses, antiphons of him and I, walking down the Calle Bernardo in dappled shade, thinking of nothing and of everything, since love is all there is . . . (Contd.) that orange-hued balustrade-- is that what they're called remember? And the musty olive oil served like wine. Well, I know that other matter, our conversation (you know) she is completely forgotten, Ida, completely memories have that effect you mustn't when your dad said I remarked how stodgy I seemed, but she doesn't really know me. I have always liked your mother, she An hour to the flight, 60 minutes, then God knows how long after that like forever (December 1985) We studied Italian together, sitting in mother's garden where roses piled upon roses and tried to overwhelm us, and bees reminded us of love, and mother peered out from behind lace curtains, upstairs -- just an eye -- but we saw, and he smiled, and tried to say his feelings about her in Italian, but ended up in laughter, and the lace curtain closed and we dared touch lips . . . (Contd.) and this funny looking guy carrying three or four cameras his eyes moving obvious fat detective bad movie sits beside me and he smelled, so I moved. Rude? I guess, but Angelo Corrini, kid in highs school outlandish and he smelled too -- God, it was told you about Angelo? What are you doing right now, at this moment? what I don't know sleeping? On your right side as always, facing that picture looked at us when we made love a mirror, huh? (March 1986) The stuff of ashes and of light my thoughts are like the missing parts, ash-burned, and a pattern of mystery. Was this all contained in prophesy from the first exploding universe? And what answer would matter to me or to him? Such pre-determined flowing bits of life mingled as much like blowing leaves as like mathematic surety. My hand holding his, his mine in a tumult of destinies . . . was all this just amazing chance, like when in San Polo we came upon a blind man crossing the same bridge, or when we touched the waters of Lake Barrea with our feet, and both looked out at the same moment and saw a swan looking back? (Contd.) really sorry you brought her up, especially when we were having such a don't look back, my sweet terrible and dark should always look ahead, don't you agree? a "woman's thing" She never was anything really meaningful I, forget Let's just at our own live, not anyone else's (March 1986) To fill in the missing parts to find what else was said . . . I brought her up because in the rain one night we passed a marquee and a face like hers hung there, looking at him, and I know I felt him slow his pace and look back. And in Rome at the Piazza di Spagna again we passed a mother and daughter, smiling, and the child had eyes like hers, and I know he saw them too. Does it matter that his thoughts burned up and coded in ash and vacancy contain her? He would simply smile and shake his head, philosophize and say: "Don't look back, my sweet." The light in Venice scoured the roofs in sienna and burnt umber. The muddy canals, filled with shoe-shaped boats bobbing wavelets, all should have been peaceful, draped with the sheen of that city's grand history, but I saw him once, staring at the mirror in our room with a kind of madness, thinking: "Is he trapped in this romance like a dancer told to pirouette?" The back of his head -- I wished to pierce with knives of prescient sight to peer a sliver of his true self . . . but did I really want such an intrusion to tell me more of her, to reinforce my occasional standing away? (Contd.) since you left me to go home to school, why not I could, then wishing I was partly like you goal directed, huh? sometimes you visionary and, well you are a poet explains it, my sweet. I think the fat man with the cameras (unless I am just paranoid) following me with his odorous bulk bad memory poetic? (April 1986) Yes, yes, bad memories come, following with cameras full of exposed film. Did he know this metaphor well enough to suffer it fully -- sitting there alone? Could he extract and separate the good from the bad, or are they so mingled, like a tightly woven fabric that the whole past must be unraveled to see it clearly, and then, what's the point -- a pile of tangled threads at one's feet with comprehension gone? It's best to leave one's memory complete, especially when alone. You may be gone, but you are never to be gone, nor gone are the beliefs I had and didn't have as we walked the honeymoon paths later in the Alhambra and Provence and watched the green sea tell of permanence and the going out and coming in of time. (Contd.) never strained to read much, therefore I remained rather dumb must have, in your eyes but and here we are (or rather you and yours) no mistake, my sweet, along came your eyes followed closely by the and the short of that I loved you before touching your did you know (March 1987) Before touching there is nothing but an ether, a hum, a vibrating string. Before touching there is space to realize one's intended style in the matter of love. Oh my tame Siegfried, swordless and lost, sounding out the heavens with your briefcase and your vocabulary of such subdued lust. But I shall regard those days, and you will remind me when I light candles. (Contd.) moved again! Damn him and his cameras reminds me(forgive me here) of your aunt May. Hope you don't bored silly, looking magazines. The sky is so gray and if the flight is cancelled I'll be quite pissed! Are you in the bed thinking of me (June 1988) Those charred holes are now like small doors through which I see the sky and only faintly the tips of the Santa Maria della Salute. I never count the years now since my time is counted out in lines of poetry, and time has no meaning in this art. All is at the nexus of secrets, a burning niche of truth. It has come clear, on this bright spring day I've finally kept you long enough to say goodbye, and yet . . . (Contd.) Hello -- they're calling the flight at wrap this up, sweet why I am writing this coming home? and see you so soon (August 1995) Is love like a lost purse, and orphan, a missing symphony, a clutching at an image one desires while the image dances on when the dance ends? Who can say -- the biology of love is but a trick of the eyes, when one sees themselves reflected there, Narcissistic, auto-erotic tension in every sinew? Or is love a bound history before it's lived out, pages and pages of great and small events, touching all past and all future with the hands of both Dionysius and Apollo, clasped around all reality to the point of dizziness and tremor? Or is it a song one sings and never forgets the melody -- because one can't-- as it meshes so tightly with the cadences of one's life and breath? Or is it, because it can't be there in flesh, there's only the beat-beat-beat of it's omission? Ten years, and the ash, long since washed like the melting of an infinite glacier. Ten years to the day, and the stars have remained as they were. I pause and remark to myself: This moment has no meaning given by the years, and I'm not the Ida he once loved, in Venice or Provence, walking the ancient paths of poetic lore I held so sacred before he left. I'm the Ida of my moment now, the tree and not the seed of tree, the blossom, not the hovering bee. The woman now reclining in my wicker chair beside my roses (with no lace-parted eye to see) dreaming forward to my days with me . . . (Contd.) PS I'll be there before this letter I'll read it in the patio laugh a poet and reading my anyway, arrivederci (July 1999) I crushed plums today and made jam and remembered little of what I should know: things like your look when you saw me open the door . . . and living has been easy living just with me. What do you make of that, my Siegfried, my dead lover? Will you say at long last: vi capisco if I say: non mi ricordo? Richard Sansom | |
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