Guillermo Juan Parra
Evil Stanzas
No spirit seek here rest.
—Stephen SpenderI
Breath defines line length
As does notebook shape / sizeYesterday afternoon hearing
Archie Shepp playfull breath, rich-toned
saxophone chords
think language too
can do this /make feeling evidence
sound can evil stanzasAs one sufferer said:
unto us denied blessingsMake characteristic failure
our tautness—a trance
II
after Juan Sánchez PeláezIf snow falls now
on a street without course
nor sign,
myriad shades inquire
from the foyer
if our errantry is fleeting,
will it last or not
and they point toward
the actual path
always attentive or dressed
in night cloththus
from what north or south
from what east or west
these prompt shadows arrive
or amble
through fields
in stables and cottages,no one knows
save at dusk’s thin beam
when we can glimpse the absent
when our big hands
talking alone
open toward the other cold.
III
Taking stanzas at three breaths
per lyric—the landscape digest
in journal form / small pressdfigured language
thru prayer & magick
verses hymn transit
afterwards prophet etc.at evening’s husk our trees
their carved bark, memoryhow our airs take care to
translate by image by image
IV
How do we survive these torrents
of violence and animosity, filtered
through daily routines of Empire
and neo-colonization?
Violence of gesture and language
underpinning all social relations.
One must be lithe, agile and
strategic—patterns of
inquiry / Breath gleaned or
entire libraries memorized.
Ancestry combined by sensibility
and Dream-book futures.
Method divulged to none.
V
The poem arriving in gusts
of wind
directly off the Charles
My left hand
keeping the pages down
This eye turned down
in the pages—
disappearance map
career & sun drops
into the city
ever-taut and relucienteMy feet dragging under weight
Denied entry to the halls
because of a tone or shadeall physical qualities count
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