By John Taylor.

Paintings by Marc Feld.

•

1

behind you, not ahead,
a gap that only your gaze could span
and that you’ve now long crossed

2

behind you, not ahead,
remain the wounds
you still see ahead
on the uncommitted sky

3

stitches removed too soon, yet they had sealed the essential, left a line that led away

4

near this new edge of uncertainty,
tracks in the mud:
the same small animal
that no longer should frighten,
but reassure

5

you’ve tried to clarify
why you leapt
off the embankment,
explored the ravine,
clambered up the other side

6

every ravine reveals
the life of water
the life of leaves
the life of light

7

on every surface of the future
your face was scratched away:
this opened a present

8

he who now keeps you in sight
is he who you have not,
will not have,
become

9

you still sketch slopes
real and unreal
to make your headlong falls
seem gentle headways

10

you delude yourself
by postponing
the pull of gravity

11

what troubles you because it seems formless is perhaps a horizon of forms; or is it the horizon of forms that troubles you?

12

you are searching for a face, perhaps find an eye, even two eyes, a recollection thereof, while you are yourself sinking

13

whatever wets your tongue,
be it the remembrance of milk,
retains you,
sometimes erodes you

14

a flood of tears is more than you expected, but now you can see the mounds down which you rolled, the submerged shelters in which you crouched, for what they are

15

when you need a perspective,
the air fills with more than air

16

what you let go of
hazes above your life
becomes a shelter, a home
that homes back in

17

memory
of a nipple between your lips—
again you taste the law of flesh

18

you have strung up even your childhood by its feet
to see what bleeds,
what blends with the dirt,
what bones remain

19

credo: what uproots you
will root you
and you will twig
and leaf

20

credo: what must join
waits,
will join

21

on barren ground you remember the island as if someone else were standing on it; if this castaway is someone else, you can perhaps rescue him

22

his encounters with himself separated into beginnings, all except one of which he abandoned on the shore

23

in a desert, sea fossils point the way

24

on the trunk of a petrified tree, the soft yellow moss, the bark fibers underneath, are also stone; but rest your thought on them: they convey

25

a rule inside you replaces an embankment with a cliff

26

whether you leap from an edge, or fall from clouds, the firm ground awaits. Topple the drop-off, shape new strata

27

the cliff from which you would not leap now sometimes lifts you when you gaze at it, as if you were yourself the verticality, the trail twisting up the wall; at least you try to imagine it so

28

seen from the overlook, which you sometimes reach, the cliff, as it disintegrates, plants stepping stones

29

or it leaves behind puddles on which are reflected specks of sunlight that remind you of the words you need

30

or it releases from some unsuspected cavern a brook both dark and bright, that shines and soothes, that flows forward through an emptiness over which you can stand

31

and if this dark sparkling brook, and the yellow light that bathes it, one day seem asunder as if only the darkness had flowed over the gap, over the flat gray boulder as real as your flesh, taking with it only a residue of those reflected specks that also soon will vanish, it is time for you to contemplate what is crossable, even as you, as a child, would peer into the deep leaf-filled ravine with its moist shadows, and then at the other embankment

32

as if, against all expectations, something yellow could sprout from a tiny void, take shape, grow, showing you that a mote of light can be a petal or a seed33

as if a passageway would also emerge, or a bridge, fields spread on the other side, and other imaginable spaces germinate into marvelous geometries

34

then a breath of wind, or a refreshing downpour, whatever it was, reawakened and reminded you; it filled the gap, unrolled its soft sheet over the boulder

35

now it is a cascade that you are approaching too closely; yet this time, since you are trying to become the cliff of yourself, you are not only the spectator who welcomes in sound and wetness and movement, but you are also the limestone wall, the pebbly streambed, a plane surface, even a receptacle for what you are not

36

in your dizziness, you are gazing down this sheer cliff, then into the current as it flows away; everything seems in motion, tipping over, advancing; your falling now progresses along the bank, a field in fallow; there is even a clump of wildflowers with one yellow blossom persisting; what is its name?

37

silence; you are yourself the vector, the flowing, the falling, the faring forward, and your eyes can at last relinquish their dialogue with the light; sleep

38

and, borne along by the water, tumble like pebbles across the gray boulder

♦

JOHN TAYLOR (b. 1952) is a contributing editor of The Fortnightly Review. Two of his books have appeared in the Odd Volumes series: his translation of Philippe Jaccottet’s Truinas, 21 April 2021 and his “double book” co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges. Among his several books of poetry and poetic prose are Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press) and Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press). Forthcoming from Coyote Arts is a new collection, What Comes from the Night. His website can be found here.

MARC FELD (b. 1960) is a French artist who lives and works in Paris. Painting is at the heart of his work and thought. According to the French poet Zéno Biano, painting is indeed for Feld “an inexhaustible surging forth.” He has exhibited his art in Paris, elsewhere in France, and abroad. He has also conceived performances that blend painting, music, and the stage arts. He has long collaborated with poets to create livres d’artistes: his Sablés inventés collects ten such examples (Éditions Bernard Dumerchez, 2024). Another recent collaborative project is Rayons de nuit (Le Castor Astral, 2023), which juxtaposes thirty-one reproductions of his paintings and Jean Portante’s French translation of selected poems by Paul Celan. Feld has illustrated the covers of numerous books, notably John Taylor’s forthcoming translation of Charline Lambert’s poems (Of Desire and Decarceration, Diálogos Books, 2024). His website can be found here.