Lisa Robertson Poems

Sometimes I want a corset like
to harden me or garnish. I
think of this stricture—rain
language, building—as a corset: an
outer ideal mould, I feel
the ideal moulding me the ideal
is now my surface just so very
perfect I know where to buy it and I
take it off. I take it off. If all things fall
and we are just emperors, serious
and accurate and fugitive
in such dormant lines of gorgeousness
the day is a locksmith
dew lies long on the grass
and I a rustic ask: what is
a surface—and respond
only omniscience, the crumpling face
as the domestic emotions elucidate
themselves a sea of mist
exists so strangely side by side
the potent mould of anarchy and scorn.
...

I have tried to say
that, although Love is not judgement
analysis too is a style
of affect
since the scale that rends me vulnerable
has cut, from abundance, doubt
(not that identity shunts
civic ratio or consequence) Sure —
I would prefer to respond to only
the established charms (and forget inconvenience)
but her hair was also a kind of honey
or instrument.

All that is beautiful, from which I choose
even artifice, which I hold above nature
won't salve these stuttered accoutrements
...

To those whose city is taken give glass
pockets. To those whose quiver gapes give queens
and pace their limbs with flutes, ropes, cups of soft
juice. To those whose threshold vacillates give
that bruise the dust astonished. To falling
heroes give raucous sibyls' polished knees.
To those who sip nectar give teeth. And if
they still sip nectar—give green chips of wood.
To swimmers give clocks or rank their hearts
among new satellites as you would
Garbo's skint lip. To scholars, give dovecotes
to virgins, targets. Justice has nothing on them.
Virgil, sweetheart, even pretty fops need
justice. If they think not let creditors
flank them and watch their vigour quickly flag.
To exiled brides give tiny knives and beads
of mercury then rob them of prudence
for prudence is defunct. To those who fist
clouds, give powder. And if their sullen
wallets flap, give nothing at all. Still
I have not addressed lambent fops
swathed in honey, the stuttering moon
Martyrs, Spartans, Sirens, Mumblers, Pawns
Ventriloquists—or your sweet ego

The Beloved Ego in the plummy light
is you. When I see you in that light
I desire all that has been kept from me
etcetera. For you. Since your rough shirt
reminds me of the first grass
pressing my hips and seeds heads
fringing the sky and the sky
swaying lightly to your scraped
breath, since I hear
panicked, my sister calling
since the gold leaves have all
been lost, and you are at least
several and variegated
I toss this slight thread back

The beloved ego on cold marble
blurs inscription. Hey Virgil
I think your clocked ardour is stuck
in the blue vein on my wrist. It stops
all judgement
...

What is this tint that in the shrill cress
Will never cease to trouble us and in the fields
Gives prick and praise for Beauty?
And said birds that feed on berries
Are pervious—and shook the snow from his thighs.
I thought of nothing carefully, but of snow, and the birds.
Then kissed the cup and sipped a little
Though almost choked drank slowly
Tickled with strange measure
She faked a pretty anger
I entertained the night with fantastic, empty pleasure
We went as far as the ivie-bush
And ivie-crowns upon our heads
And carried her kiss untouched and entire
Then all was fresh, inclined
To wriggle and nussle and lascivious
Ardent leaps. In the thickest of the wood
Bid him kiss close and often
And directed him to her fancie
The ground had a sweeter scent, the boughs a blush
One fruit, rare and rich, would outdo many together
She was wild to climb the tree
Nor would she be forbidden
She seized the apple and put it in her bosom.
...

First all belief is paradise. So pliable a medium. A time not very long. A transparency caused. A conveyance of rupture. A subtle transport. Scant and rare. Deep in the opulent morning, blissful regions, hard and slender. Scarce and scant. Quotidian and temperate. Begin afresh in the realms of the atmosphere, that encompasses the solid earth, the terraqueous globe that soars and sings, elevated and flimsy. Bright and hot. Flesh and hue. Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. We range the spacious fields, a battlement trick and fast. Bright and silver. Ribbons and failings. To and fro. Fine and grand. The sky is complicated and flawed and we're up there in it, floating near the apricot frill, the bias swoop, near the sullen bloated part that dissolves to silver the next instant bronze but nothing that meaningful, a breach of greeny-blue, a syllable, we're all across the swathe of fleece laid out, the fraying rope, the copper beech behind the aluminum catalpa that has saved the entire spring for this flight, the tops of these a part of the sky, the light wind flipping up the white undersides of leaves, heaven afresh, the brushed part behind, the tumbling. So to the heavenly rustling. Just stiff with ambition we range the spacious trees in earnest desire sure and dear. Brisk and west. Streaky and massed. Changing and appearing. First and last. This was made from Europe, formed from Europe, rant and roar. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Crested and turbid. Silver and bright. This was spoken as it came to us, to celebrate and tint, distinct and designed. Sure and dear. Fully designed. Dear afresh. So free to the showing. What we praise we believe, we fully believe. Very fine. Belief thin and pure and clear to the title. Very beautiful. Belief lovely and elegant and fair for the footing. Very brisk. Belief lively and quick and strong by the bursting. Very bright. Belief clear and witty and famous in impulse. Very stormy. Belief violent and open and raging from privation. Very fine. Belief intransigent after pursuit. Very hot. Belief lustful and eager and curious before beauty.Very bright. Belief intending afresh. So calmly and clearly. Just stiff with leaf sure and dear and appearing and last. With lust clear and scarce and appearing and last and afresh.
...

The one that goes cack-cack-cack
the one that whinnies like a colt at the back of the field
perhaps they have plundered the mediocrity of capital
to parody it as sensation.

The great elaborate theme
crumples slowly, heavily, elaborately
nudging forward against the picture plane
like a non-supernatural experience that transfigures things
by way of fit, drape, weight, mode of fastening
unstoppable reverie and overdetermination.
Sometimes one is
an elephant
leaving physics behind
for cosmology
sometimes the body is quiet
in its great effort to avoid equilibrium.
...

Go now. Recite your poem to your aunt.
I threw myself to the ground.
Where were you in the night?
In a school among the pines.
What was the meaning of the dream?
A rough clay bottle. A carved wooden salt-box with a swivelling lid. A tin travelling
trunk painted green.
What would feel like home?
What would a school feel like?
I haven't yet been satisfied.
Let's organize a pageant.
Many boys, dressed as nymphs, each carrying an olive branch.
What do you see?
I'm not looking out the window.
Everything is half finished.
Where is my seagull?
There.
...

Walking between the field and the last houses at 10pm
holding the lilacs aloft like a torch
its vital sense of pause
everything will be hesitation
the acts of transposition
muscular, tactile, olfactory
where the image itself senses.
...

The pinky moon was swishing all
quivering-flanked, heaves, vomits, sniffs her
vomit, looks to the horizon, sniffs the
air, standing still, looking, ears erect - She
was fluttering, falling, fundamentally
somatic, fanning like hearts; a distant
name in an exotic and privileged
setting - Miuccia Prada for
example - pulsing upwardly post-
metaphysical and if I sit at
my desk in my big coat it's because words
are cold.

Now, the glorious suture or the
philosophy of the tree. The tree doesn't
"have" "a body". This means when it comes to
the need for changing, the tree just waits. It
takes all my art to live beside a tree
with uncaused devotion and the
abandonment of determinism and
I am sad.
...

When I learned grief, its arms changed
into the forelegs of an animal
and bark climbed upwards to sheath its hips
I also longed to be under
that bark, I longed for my own hoofs. Then
I threw off my green coat and I clenched my hands
and I throve
and thriving shamed me.
...