New York London New York Adagio - All Night Crossing The Atlantic I Read Franz Poem by Warren Falcon

'Because the soul is a stranger in this world...'

'This blue world. Unattainable - stranger than dying,
by what unmerited grace were we allowed to come see it.'

- Franz Wright



I just want to say to you, Franz:

such blackness I have traveled through all night, and

because of
you I have made my peace with the Atlantic.

And returned, I slept, one hip wounded, a new name to be announced at a future date
bearing a significance of which I can only wonder

derived of a bruise that I have often sung, of swift and terrible deity grasped. It grabs back, refuses
to relent but is bargained with and for, leaving one bent, limping, a worshiper forever.

I can wait for the meaning if it ever arrives. My legs hurt treading air the ocean long, tired from such distances traveled with strangers, so many,

so many, I had not known desire had undone so many,


I am still cool upon the pallet on the floor in a darkened room, curtains closed,

almost too much, as from sleep one streak hurts this morning, reflected light through a curtain crack,

it turns upon my small quarter from a dirty window across the street, or a parked car below, a moment of light a shard in the alley (it's a mystery from where) leaping up, and

upon the ceiling scores mandalas of earth tones

(another Atlantic, its hidden floor, perhaps its ghost?)

man made above me asking for my blessing, meaning
my honoring, it then

moves to the top shelf, the volumes in ancient Greek,
Biblical,

textbooks for learning that tongue college days - brief sparks then nothing, the voltage gone, dead as Aramaic and Koine,

remembered light only.

But, Franz, in a room full of gathered
strings sound and light, lingering, I
think it would please you to know that
there are some who are still capable
of such wakings that come in between
times ajar in spaces cracked or pulled
apart indiscriminately admitting what
may enter no questions asked, only
gasps and wonder reaching for sky
or ceiling here, and yes, that wide
'good earth' so torn between wildness
wild and that of the human unkind
before/above and within such clash,

finally an
ultimate lowering of gaze that may we arrive
knowing our place, our part in the destruction
and yet, and yet...


It may or may not amount to much but if there is a heap such as you have made and leave for me, space to read four miles high night bound for a country I've never been to, have never known but from books,

then let the dead volumes deserve their dust and praise. I'll not shout about such moments here to you, that they are, but just pass news of them on to you who perhaps are saying, have already written,

Yes. Yes. I knew it all along.


********

Both quotes are from Franz Wright's book, Entries of the Cell.