Prelude and Fugue No. 10 in E minor


My sunburned desire: atop hot boulders lizards lying lazily across each other: their pineal eyes that learned a hundred million years ago to track the sun: octopi in shallow water hiding under rocks: bright quick colors caressing the fragile reef: sand wearing itself smooth: the long long yawns of iguanas lolling leather tongues: shorebirds fascinated by their intermittently submerged feet: pelicans diving and diving: gulls in flight dropping shellfish onto rocks to break them open.

            •

can a passacaglia be sung I can’t remember
how does a tongue feel on the back of my neck I can’t remember
or someone’s fingers tracing my shoulderblades I can’t remember
who is speaking here me or her or you I don’t remember
does love start because it has already started it must
did I fall in love with you because I was in love already I must have
has anything harmed me more than love no nothing
how does it feel to meet another’s eyes and be unable to breathe I can’t remember
what is it like to hear your lover’s voice and touch her body I can’t remember
though I can still name what I miss about the old life
hiss of water in pipes the curve of a particular spine
breaking up clods of clay to mix them with peat
squirrels hanging by their back paws stretching down
to clutch clusters of maple seeds at the ends of branches
pairs of maple seeds shaped like bats handfuls of spent flowers
holding a steaming cup of tea while standing in snow
hummingbirds hummingbirds above all hummingbirds
anything that feeds on flowers and shines in the sun
and need not sing because it can fly backward
knows something the gods would keep to themselves
if there were gods

This poem is from a sequence entitled “The Well-Tempered Clavier”
(named, obviously, after Bach’s work exploring the “well-tempered” tuning system).
Collected in Chromatic (Etruscan Press, 2006).