As
Slow As Possible
as slow as possible
can now mean 639 years
interpretation is all
Cage would no doubt
have liked the idea for
organ 2 / ASLSP in
Halberstadt. It will
take 25 generations
to hear it all. On Wednesday
two tones changed,
and the new ones were
found good by the audience.
The little girl had her
hands clasped tight
over her ears, but was
humming the new tones.
In
Fez
Mohamed V
plane trees are plain
palm fronds frame
the nature of evening
lukewarm pollution
mopeds, mopeds
petits taxis & Mercedes
Benz’ees, finish
you tea, clear
your throat.
& in the
background, the golden
lights of medina Fès el-Bali
in the foreground the
old gardens’
deep greens in dark, yet
in the middle, the shrill vulgar gold
of those arches:
& it’s vast parking lot
to my left, hidden by where I sit,
the new city’s bustle
to my right, across the ravine
proud brand-new projects
waiting for their first taggers
& I am waiting
for my daily twelve storks
Bab
Bou Jeloud
Clouds today, at
least a
few
to make the blue
sky
interesting.
What is green inside
&
blue outside?
A gate named after
a goat,
its skin
at least like every
true
barrier
or border
it is more hole then wall,
more to
go through.
The moussem crowds
moved
me back
& forth
then kept me (moving) in the inside
of the gate. A
gate is to walk
through
no matter
the direction
I was door, the crowd hinge
I swung
under its creak.
One could live there,
I mean
in the
gate, be in shade
but traversed by wind & people
to live
there and not be
a keeper — that is
the challenge
for under
it the blue &
the green become interchangeable
for who
lives there.
Only for those who
come to it
from
either side will
the colors matter, or at least tell them
from
where they are.
When you are the gate
there is
no need to know
this subterfuge we call
the inside & the outside
I am there again,
favorite place
is
middle, isthmus
the between: the only place that is
all we
can be in at once.
On
the terrace of the Star of Fez
On the terrace of the Star of Fez
with an orange juice at 10 p.m.
on a Saturday “in this world”
the dust of the fantasia
settled or dispersed long ago
tomorrow morning the storks won’t
need to cough as this heavy
silent beast waves & weaves
the air just a touch
too far for me to feel it
move on the balcony of the Menze
Zalagh Fundook where they threw
in a free bargain breakfast
while the street light dims
and the straws of the bird nest
built into it wave
in
the slight breeze but
much
less than the soccer players
on the t.v. screen and even
less than the last two customers
under the spell of that
strange balletic
brotherhood
while the waiter, both
bored and tired, joins me on
the sidewalk where we sit
he wondering or not what it is
I
am doing and I
distracted
from the writing look up
at the passing Sécurité Nationale
paddy wagon where our
gazes meet in a slight
smile we’ll remember or not
when I’ll come in for my
breakfast tagine about
seven tomorrow morning.
O
T H A A
oh to have an alphabet
with letters too
recalcitrant to
make up words,
letters that refuse
to join &
thus wander alone
down main street and
out of town & on
into the desert, there
to have visions of
words and sentences,
long caravans of
letters linked like
camel to camel,
and only one letter
left alone, the one
runs and circles
the linked
caravan, the letter
that all by itself
by its mad run
& hoary bark spells
the word dog.
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