NOTHING of the memorable crisis or might the event have been accomplished in view of all results null human WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE an ordinary elevation pours out absence BUT THE PLACE some splashing below of water as if to disperse the empty act abruptly which otherwise by its falsehood would have founded perdition in these latitudes of indeterminate waves in which all reality dissolves EXCEPT on high PERHAPS as far as place can fuse with the beyond aside from the interest marked out to it in general by a certain obliquity through a certain declivity of fires toward what must be the Septentrion as well as North A CONSTELLATION cold from forgetfulness and desuetude not so much that it doesn't number on some vacant and superior surface the successive shock in the way of stars of a total account in the making keeping vigil doubting rolling shining and meditating before coming to a halt at some terminus that sanctifies it All Thought emits a Throw of the Dice
From Collected Poems (University of California Press, 1994) by Stéphane Mallarmé. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Strict and bound
as an analog watch,
Aristotelian narrative
calls for a probable
necessary sequence.
It is suicide season.
The calendar taunts
with year three’s death dance.
Dialysate swills
in my abdomen.
Long arrows of surgery
nudge under my ribs
trace my hipbones
garland my navel.
Along my lower back
divots of biopsy
freckle into sickles
when I bend over.
Driving over the city bridge
quirk or quark humming
I might be spared.
My grandmother loved
singing O What a Beautiful City
as she sorted her pills.
The anesthetic mask
shatters linear discipline:
Trotting the deep path by mosslight,
son is a dark-haired universe
in the crook of my right arm.
Five pound blood-hum
prayer and verse ripping
my skull pure off.
Time has me scalped
kissing the whorls of my brain
with frank red lips.
Rolling up from surgery
I look down to my wrist
where someone has clasped
my watch on loosely.
Copyright © 2019 by Laura Da'. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 14, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.