W. Scott Howard
SPIRAL SONG
Already someone’s
been here, asking similar
questions. Que sais-je?
Imagining how
to navigate the archive--
deep central basement.
Echoes, glances, foot
steps winding anywhichway,
seeking the unknown.
Within heavy nouns--
tomes, volumes, cantos, stanzas--
silence speaks to me.
Manuscript, fragment
facsimile, edition--
transfigurations.
Remixing language
from other places, contexts--
soundshapes in these tracks.
Ciphered wilderness
shelved at such heavy cost, slim
folders feathering.
Octavo rebound,
polished calf, minor foxing
throughout. Pages cropped.
Secret sympathies--
interleaf appearances,
aery grey thinness.
Ghost traces, shadow
prints upon mid-winter snow--
poets in the park.
Each page, a poem--
peripheries of breaking
light, spontaneous.
Poem of a curve--
lines like ears within questions
unanswerable.
Such turning beyond
justification—volta,
space, apostrophe.
Zone of myth—drift-cloud
spiral song-shift instances
rising from the script.
These eyes for not aye--
iambs of other selves, all
familiar strangers.
Sentences, woven
textiles limning images--
articulations.
Writing revisions
under erasure—the work
something else becomes.
River willow—dark
intertextuality--
branches, allusions.
In every instance,
transience. Moving target--
five, seven & five.
Senryū or haiku?
Depending upon one’s view,
nature is all things.
Across distances—phrases,
drifts enveloping
steps “thru high passages,” slopes.
Why not a line of seven,
another of five,
engendering six plus one?
Back to the table
“yet once more”—variations
on a common theme.
Annotating “what
otherwise echoes alone”--
signs among visions.
“What does it matter
who is speaking?”—someone asked,
not understanding.
Quick dash prosody
she writes on open windows--
nothing there for him.
Scratches, traces, notes
in the margins—returning
disappearances.
Tonight I will dream
of books inside of language--
upside-down reading.
Raftered sesames,
scurf-veil apophenia--
sun riding onward.
Map or puzzle? Home
travels beyond places, names.
What was the question?
Archimedean
circumferential centers--
everyone’s elsewhere.
The comma, a small
crooked point—trigger between
one and the many.
Five, et cetera--
this cadence in the moment
changing stillness here.
Already someone’s
been here, asking similar
questions. Que sais-je?
Imagining how
to navigate the archive--
deep central basement.
Echoes, glances, foot
steps winding anywhichway,
seeking the unknown.
Within heavy nouns--
tomes, volumes, cantos, stanzas--
silence speaks to me.
Manuscript, fragment
facsimile, edition--
transfigurations.
Remixing language
from other places, contexts--
soundshapes in these tracks.
Ciphered wilderness
shelved at such heavy cost, slim
folders feathering.
Octavo rebound,
polished calf, minor foxing
throughout. Pages cropped.
Secret sympathies--
interleaf appearances,
aery grey thinness.
Ghost traces, shadow
prints upon mid-winter snow--
poets in the park.
Each page, a poem--
peripheries of breaking
light, spontaneous.
Poem of a curve--
lines like ears within questions
unanswerable.
Such turning beyond
justification—volta,
space, apostrophe.
Zone of myth—drift-cloud
spiral song-shift instances
rising from the script.
These eyes for not aye--
iambs of other selves, all
familiar strangers.
Sentences, woven
textiles limning images--
articulations.
Writing revisions
under erasure—the work
something else becomes.
River willow—dark
intertextuality--
branches, allusions.
In every instance,
transience. Moving target--
five, seven & five.
Senryū or haiku?
Depending upon one’s view,
nature is all things.
Across distances—phrases,
drifts enveloping
steps “thru high passages,” slopes.
Why not a line of seven,
another of five,
engendering six plus one?
Back to the table
“yet once more”—variations
on a common theme.
Annotating “what
otherwise echoes alone”--
signs among visions.
“What does it matter
who is speaking?”—someone asked,
not understanding.
Quick dash prosody
she writes on open windows--
nothing there for him.
Scratches, traces, notes
in the margins—returning
disappearances.
Tonight I will dream
of books inside of language--
upside-down reading.
Raftered sesames,
scurf-veil apophenia--
sun riding onward.
Map or puzzle? Home
travels beyond places, names.
What was the question?
Archimedean
circumferential centers--
everyone’s elsewhere.
The comma, a small
crooked point—trigger between
one and the many.
Five, et cetera--
this cadence in the moment
changing stillness here.