Res Signata Restituere Retributio Poem by Desmond Kon

when will you paint me pictures of home again?
those pictures spoke a sensible content
a rare happiness I haven’t seen in you recently
your half-smiles a disinclination to things as if life forced you into its elisions
a hammering, a mezzanine of one-man antechambers;
you are lassaw’s composition in steel, its principal arch a glassless window
you look at through and under, at once opaque and a cellophane
these lighting fixtures wrapped too
to bloom like lucent tulips tipping over in a wide bowl;
then there’s blackburn, his irish blacksmith and his iron-clad song –
how you determined its significations – a wry system
textual, mutual gravitation, of orderliness thrust into vast regions of space;
I think prisms and you say the bizarre must buck the obvious
an emphatic stress; you love prevarication
I think the bottom rung is a cautionary tale, you say, the whalebone
above it a pitchfork; road as conditional as the bridge
deck-beam simple as clarity, as contingent a fathering
the forehead kisses you require before you leave; you say
the territories of each satellite once mapped, cannot gather space
like sandcastles with widening moats; the camel hues
need to be painted luminous like reflective signs
the no exits, locked doorways to safety; always alarming
one more dangerous leap to help us pass the rundown sections of god
and his breakable city; you appraise art, intense-sacramental
as if bemused but aggrieved;
when will you pick up your brushes again?
or charcoal, just contours and the insides left a benevolent white
the saved time sanctified for old-fashioned observances no longer
religious, no longer a bluish-red bloodedness or the depth
of eleven miles with no end in sight; in sight
we are restored wise restraints, don’t you think?
no hurt going derelict, its vessel poised like that autumn leaf
clutched like a kalij pheasant trussed, tired struggle
now a hung-up defeat, a diffidence about what birthrights may be built
into a fairground; its exhibits travelling – goods transfer
passengers transfer – our devotions a raised area





Author’s Note:

An earlier version of this poem was published in New Orleans Review, literary journal of Loyola University New Orleans.

“Res signata” translates into “the thing signified”, often understood as “res sacramenti” or “the thing of the sacrament”, defined as the thing toward which the visible sign of a sacrament points. The Latin “retributio” means “repayment” while “restituere” means “to restore”.