My Lover Poem by gershon hepner

Do you know the country where forgetting weighs
far heavier than memories we store?
No orange blossom blooms where we forget the days,
and nights that are not memorable ignore.
From there, from there, I wish to flee and yet am drawn
because I feel that I may yet recover
in that strange land where all the fruit are rudely torn
from branches far beyond my reach my lover.

Inspired by the first lines of a poem by Samuel Beckett in “Poetry”, bon bon il est un pays, and Goethe’s Kennst du as Land?

all right all right there’s a land
where forgetting where forgetting weights
gently upon worlds unnamed
there the head we shush it the head is mute
and one knows no but one knows nothing
the song of dead mouths dies
on the shore it has made its voyage
there is nothing to morn

my loneliness I know it oh well I know it badly
I have time is what I tell myself I have time
but what time famished bone the time of the dog
of a sky incessantly paling my grain of sky
of the climbing ray ocellate trembling
of microns of years of darkness

you want me to go from A to B I cannot
I cannot come out I’m in a traceless land
yes yes it’s a fine thing you’ve got there a mighty fine thing
what is that ask me no more questions
spiral dust of instants what is this the same
the calm the love the hate the calm the calm


1/28/08