A CLEAR SENSE Poem by Claude Royet-Journoud

dazzle
faced with the nature of the crime
a simulacrum depletes the soil


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Having chosen the angle, photographs the muscle.
The image comes down. We're outside. Submitting
and fallen. The voice holds the back up. An
irremediable geographical confusion. She does
not realize how close to her this world is. She only
knows she treads over a dark viscous terror. A list of
infinitives prolongs the accident.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


on the floor
alphabet with ancestor

is it a lake
this free-lance eye ?

the body slips in there
from a word to demolish

constrains the beast
to shift about and about


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


the numeral is to the left of the construction
they loom up
in restless movement
for space they have lightness


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


repetition is moving back
from the visible brink

the voice conceals
a state of weightlessness

she cannot interrupt its flight

around this stain
the day of the numeral, of the strangulation
the wrist burns the old way
name poised on the lips
they come together


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


"A language they have not thought in." A childhood
quenched in the ruckus. She no longer improvises.
(No offering, hardly a stir.) She situates the knife-
edge, unsteadies the wound. The center of the
room a cloth of linen. He locks in loss, forces child-
hood down and bears the image to its term. Framed
stealthily, the landscape merges with the eye.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Like an unappeasable rage. Each blow reinvigorates
him. The fall gauges the distance gone. Fragility of
a sense "containing four simple bodies." Without
recognizing them, she takes up with them again.
Only the numeral resists. Sends her back to her
mine.