I
Wondrous, the emptiness so close, close to an absent sea,
only sea-fields, wheat-fields, golden stubble,
though we were walking together on a path to find the sea.
Wandering together under a wide horizon.
On a road called Pas de l’Assassin.
It made us wonder if the sea itself had been the victim.
It made us wonder about time and wide horizons,
if wheels of hay were left by Romans,
or stood in for the great eyes of Van Gogh.
About silent moments in emptiness of space,
mirage of objects that have become monuments
in a sealess town called Nieul-sur-Mer.
A gull, then two, three wheel overhead. As we walk to a no place.
From the mile of brambles, the three ripe blackberries I picked for you,
the three ripe blackberries you picked for me. You said U-topia.
Wilderness.
To be tread upon
in open consciousness,
in ecstasies.
Seeing as the grass sees.
Snails suctioning neighboring stalks, percussion of wild fennel in the breeze.
Curved beaks of birds drilling into corn and wheat scythed down to their scalps.
Cypress following their own brooding drama.
What light! The window of light white, spectral, nearly alchemical.
The sun’s ubiquity, the moon’s clarity. Two in one, this silver daylight.
Our steps barely there. In our growing transparence, in the white light of summer, we
march towards a sealess sea.
Fewer and fewer things belong to us. Knowledge. And where we’re going. Wandering to a
place we were told we would not be told.
We have come to the end of our knowing.
A contrail threads the length of a dark gray cloud and comes out
the other end,
yet another of Cupid’s curious arrows.
Is it bad luck when a bird flies between us and the sun,
tattooes my forehead, then yours with its wingspan
Who can hold the vagaries of love? Love of the earth, love of a man.
Our slim fingers never made to grasp such quick-silver lines.
Walking and wondering if we will be ever be rooted again…
II
Perhaps we have overstayed our time. And we are slowly flowing
with the fish in a shared river, though we cannot find the sea.
We could be posthumous though we have not passed through all our suffering.
I hear your suffering, and you hear mine.
Your sigh is your own fingerprint of breath.
I can see the white outline around you – what would be sea-mist.
Things already passing out of the visible, into other worlds.
They shimmer as charismatic ghosts, afterimage of shock.
The mudflats share something with the aftermath of a burn. Bones revealed. Imprints. The
negatives of this albumen silver photos.
In the radiance, police prints.
Grass pokes through the soles of our shoes.
In the steps of the assassin, our steps.
III
In the little terrace, we sit in low-slung rope chaises.
From beyond the wall arises a pink house at dusk as it drinks in light.
Take out glasses and uncork a bottle of wine.
What consolation to drink the afterlife of grapes –
Bottles of wine! The bottle full, then three-quarters full, then half. Pressing the flesh.
Spirits.
And the afterlife of wheat – bread!
One of us sleeping, one of us dreaming with open eyes
strands of your hair in the silver light
when I rubbed the hair in the small of your back,
you awoke to a dog’s sharp nails
You told me it wouldn’t have ended well
in the old country
You smashing public windows, drunken brawls
in the metro, slurping at puddles
that called like a pond
In the multivoicing, the wind, the stars,
a dog barking – across the threshold’s
transparency – comes love.
Only love to wipe the threshold.
Only love, the rag, the soft abused rag,
miserable and ever
refreshable –
the dirty cotton cloth called l’amour
that has traveled with us, in our pocket,
the way a god can be small, a pebble,
a wave, a flower.
Jill Pearlman is a poet exploring ecstasy in the decentered self and world. She is the author of the recently published, Diaspora of Things. Her poem, “Kakosmos,” appeared in print in The Common, issue #28 in 2024, part of her continuing project of navigating our perpetual immersion in chaos. Her poetry has been published in Barrow Street, Salamander, OSR, Indicia, with longer sequences in La Piccioletta Barca and Ravenna Press (upcoming). Weekly poems can be read on jillpearlman.com.
