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Notes from the Chasm
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Sorrow You were once the delirious
lanterns on my river of dreams.
Now you are the river.
No thought slips by
untouched by you.
Out of the void
where I slept,
blissful in the black
dream before birth,
blossoms erupted and
sculpted images of you,
your light like petals
reaching for the greatest
beauty all around.
Now your absence is a
plunging well:
banquet of hunger,
echoes of stone,
below me a moon
unhinged and staring
absent-mindedly,
miles to fall
before the dawn.
Your eyes were
my last memory,
my last full breath,
before the chasm.
A few days and
a lifetime ago
they were my portal
to the spheres:
flecks of Venus,
or a nebula
composed of love,
so much blue and its
endless gift
now encased in the ice of
your leaving.
The lake has no life
of its own;
it lives through the sky,
born as one note of jade,
then shattered by stars.
Your memory floats broken
among them,
your voice here and there,
and all in fragments.
Trees like rough-hewn pillars
support the mysteries above.
And even they aren't speaking.
Without you joy is a
well-kept secret,
and with the empty air
I sign my name.
Patricia Joan Jones
In early 1978, I read a lot
In early 1978, I read a lot of the poems of the Imagists from the early years of the twentieth century, primarily the poems of H.D., whom I considered the imagist par excellence. She understood Pound's imagistic theories far better than he did (if I recall, she had been his girl friend at college), and she applied them meticulously to her poems. But, for all of her profound artistry, I find her poems somewhat pallid in comparison to yours. I like the way your poems move from one image to another without allowing the reader a pause to back out, or turn sideways. The flow of images, like a river (if I may borrow the metphor), propels the reader down the length of the poem to its conclusion with no break in the flow, and no obstruction to interrupt the journey. The more I read your poetry, the more amazed I am that my random readings, decades ago, were quietly, and without my foreknowledge, preparing me for this time of my life, the time when I encountered, enjoyed, and benefitted from the Patrician style. Future grad students will envy me that I got to watch your collection assemble itself before my eyes. I doubt I will live to see its completion, but I am closely watching its continuing formation, the way each poem modifies all of its companions with its presence (and that concept I have learned from Eliot himself). This is as dramatic as watching a nebula produce stars; and, to the soul, it is more vivid.
J-Called
I can't thank you enough for
I can't thank you enough for your profound and breathtaking commentary. It makes all the difference.
It is a privilege to watch
It is a privilege to watch your literary achievement unfold before my eyes!
J-Called