Perpetual Light, and: Circular Tracks
2018; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/thr.2018.0106
ISSN1939-9774
Autores Tópico(s)Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior
ResumoPerpetual Light, and: Circular Tracks David Livewell (bio) PERPETUAL LIGHT From a low bin still wet from evening rains,I grabbed a pile of photographs beforeThe trash trucks came. Beneath a rotting doorIn the lot’s weeds, I placed those faint remains, Hidden from time again in a green place.The next day I returned alone to viewThe dead Victorians who never knewThey posed for me. Each coffin framed a face That a rare camera hadn’t caught before.When shutters snapped, their sleep was permanentBeneath the satin lids, the bouquet’s scent—And the pallbearing became my solemn chore. Did undertakers keep these grim archivesFor next of kin? The sepia had brownedTheir features with light before the holy groundDecayed those images, those vanished lives, Those swollen hands entwined with rosaries.What haunted me were infant corpses cuppedIn wooden cradles. Who could interruptSuch sleep or view those anonymities And offer sympathy? I grabbed the stackOne day from guilt and slowly walked them home.My mother frowned and watched small insects roamThe curling prints. One day when I came back [End Page 615] From school, the faithfully departed were tornAnd scattered in the kitchen trash, the deadStrange puzzle pieces shuffled in my headAnd mine the only living eyes to mourn. For Jim [End Page 616] CIRCULAR TRACKS Vinyl revolved like a stirred pot of tar,Where the lamp gleamed—unmoving, constant star. The speakers boomed each time his fingers pickedLint from the needle’s point. The motor clicked. With dust blown off, a silence hissed at first.His diamond blade cut through the growth ringsOf a black log until new music burstIn a room crammed with crates and a painter’s things. His magic records spun from their tossed sleeves.The astral weeks of Van the Man dropped leaves Like his brittle, yellowed books. Nick Drake’s pink moonBeamed through the panes of tangled window plants,Then dimmed to Buckley’s blue afternoon,And the track I spin tonight, my backward glance At Linda Thompson, young and petrifiedIs a spare dirge that’s neither withered nor died. Her voice, suspended like the fluttering curtainAnd the North Star, still leaves all tracks uncertain. [End Page 617] David Livewell DAVID LIVEWELL won the 2012 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize for Shackamaxon (Truman State University Press). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Threepenny Review, Yale Review, Southwest Review, and other journals. He is a medical editor and lives with his family near his hometown of Philadelphia. Copyright © 2018 David Livewell
Referência(s)