Lyn Hejinian

11.  

Social movements accompany music

with repetition. We begin. Then we invert

the sounds, left shoe on right foot.

We rush to the window and shout in a social voice

"Family!" Mother was strict, this is Daddy.

He is in the gentle hold of his imagination.

Still the equidistance maintains

its fantastic symmetry. The door

slams downstairs, toilet flushes,

on the street car engine revs, the radio

blares full of bass, children outside shout

so that every word achieves its peak,

two dogs, one small and one deep

are barking, and the phone rings.

The telephone is a weapon.

New noises in new American rhythms

address the world with strain.

In my sentence only a message. O clipboard

--all aspens are the same tree

widening, looseleaved.

The camera is a scissor--wipes the message

from the sentence. The fingers reduce

the surface. The holiday-makers are an audience

at sea. A railroad track

follows the passing waves.

In the waves there are two levels

to which people calmly go: up to their knees

and up to their elbows. At noon, standing there

on the line, in no particular hurry

it feels less like water than like fire.

--Lyn Hejinian

fr. "Redo"

in The Cold of Poetry

[Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994]

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