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KAZIM
ALI
ICON / TRAIN
RIDE
ICON
nominate
now which saint is to be featured on the icon of belief
how struck I was those years ago in church by the great mural of Christ
leading Adam and Eve through the broken gates of hell
again and again I return to an image of me, fever-ridden,
12 in Velore, unfolding the packet tied around my neck
that I was ordered not to open—inside letters painted in saffron
that I could not read—
why I unfolded those packets unfolds to this: a personal and historical
relief
that we have no responsibility to the tiller—
it drifts so minisculely to shore always backwards there, careful,
the signal interrupts at the slightest music the birds tear away
what reason would I need to believe in icons? how else will I remember—with
no image to fasten in that lonely place—the rock on which he flung
himself into fever—
the far mosque, called so for the miles between Mecca and Jerusalem
no more than that
between there and here
listen to this heresy:
without icon or church,
spell “birds”
spell “those years ago unfolding”
spell all those letters you could not readspell fling yourself skyward
spell fever
[reverse]
TRAIN RIDE
*
we take a compartment and draw the curtains
and shut the door so that other passengers will believe
the seats all filled and leave us—
this rudeness against Hyder’s instincts
and so I let him have the backwards facing seat:
“the proper way to look at the landscape,”
he says
*
that night in Aix-en-Provence we couldn’t find a hotel
and the hostel was closed
spent all night in the public square
receiving gifts from the late-night locals
flowers, poems, hot pastries…
*
in a frenzied state one wants to change registers or approaches…
how plainly and clearly Miguel writes about frustrated desire, fulfilled
desire…
*
a moment. then it is gone
I time everything to that lapse
current of moments
*
no absent time
even in deep space,
particles of
dark matter
*
scars on a back
rings in a tree
a cross-section of sediment
who reads
*
all these shamans, crooks,
witch-doctors, tall-tale spinners
chicken-guts, glow of the sun on the water
*
the rappelling down the cliff-face,
always a figure present in history presenting lies of various kinds
by looking back
*
read between the river
and the bank
water reeds
shore lights
*
the unraveling backwards in time
rather, the unraveling forward
the vertiginous move forward
versions melt over the sacred fire
*
we traveled alone the whole way
while my cousin was gone, girls came to sit with me
we switched trains at Dijon
we never made it as far as Aix…
*
priestesses getting high on the fumes
*
snake-licked
shucking off the old skin
haven’t any strange notion about
the presence of ruins?
*
blessed be the broken
the so undone
the train from Marseille
stalled on the tracks
*
it may only be a condition of the glass
that allows me to see the ridges of the clouds,
the swirling depth of the sky
*
the last Cezanne paintings so deathly unfinished
pencil marks on the canvas
on the white cover of the book it looks nearly transparent
*
later, in the vestibule between cars, Provencal sun setting,
I see the reflection of the book cover in the window
flooded with the bright orange, the yellow, the painting
completes itself—
*
is that all? a quest for fullness satisfied by
the correct conditions?
in this case, supposed chromatic equations of the Southern Sky?
deep yellow in Arles, green in Aix, and purple over the Cote d’Azur…
*
still later on, Hyder returns to Paris and
I hiked to St. Maries de Mer
where Magdalen supposedly washed ashore
with her servant Sarah
their bones in the reliquary of the church
*
but there is another church, miles and miles to the north and east
of here, that continues their story
that Magdalen left her servant and traveled inland with the gypsies
died there—bones there, too
*
unlike in mathematics,
every equation in history
does not necessarily have
an equivalent modular
form
*
the handfuls each only create the impression
of a manageable amount to hold
for example, here I have left out the wild flamingoes,
the horse-back ride through the Cammargue,
the black-glad gypsy in the market…
*
the Gypsy fortune telling book
a book as: a deck of images
whose order shuffles and re-shuffles
*
as the journey progresses
we do open the curtains
the compartment fills
we eat the previously unmentioned
camembert sandwiches
*
we won’t arrive in Aix for several more hours, don’t get
to Cassis for another four days
where, in four more days, in the mountains above the city,
we will meet Mister Stevarius, the Belgian fire-eater
and everything changes—
[reverse]
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