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 too, treading air the ocean long, tired from such distances traveled with strangers all around, so many,

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

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

listening to Beethhoven's String Quartets entire, Quartetto Italiano,1967, over 9 hours most exquisite, powerless over what in them can, no, has crushed me, then the Bachianas Brazilieras of Villa-Lobos, much more, 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, it is the piano in the third movement Bachianas which so startles, the felt memory of it, 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 and reaching for the sky or ceiling and yes, that wide 'good earth' so torn between wildness wild and that of the human unkind

before, above and within such clash, the opposites;

an
ultimate lowering of the gaze, may we arrive at that,

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.