HENRI DUMOLET

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The Poetry Of...
Henri Dumolet..........................................

I Think Of You When I Listen To The Jazz

That first Saturday, in her red car,
driving to Bruges, we hid for a while
in the music in her car.
So there would be no silences
even before we began.
The music was "her music,"
(I was already old,)
although it had come from America,
it set apart what is hers and what was mine,
defining the basis of spaces,
of this last space, boundless now
and long beyond redeeming.

She, (on the other hand)
was young and large-eyed,
not a domestic bird, a cormorant rising.
But also a caryatid, also the woman of all time.
The woman of Zodiaque.
Capable of making one what one wished to be.
Capable of being all that mattered.
The Lady of the Meeting
in the Forest, at the Fountain, in the Fog.

We (for the time of that word,
not long enough to resurrect the king,)
had uncertainties,
thought different things at different times,
had our problems, and had like all lovers)
bad oriental food, champagne, The Savoy,
coins in Trevi, Navonna, St. Chapelle,
favorite restaurants, photographs and coffee.
Sometimes she cried, but we had no need to quarrel.
We knew we would be separate at the end.
In this far away forest I can think of her
and feel she is, like the filtered light and the winding wind,
a part of nature, something that happens in nature.

Something that happened to me. Like the smell
of bayberry leaf crushed in the hand,
like the bareness of berry in winter.
Like the scent of santolini in the rain,
Nothing to be sad about. Like the summer
passing swiftly as remorse, to be remembered.
Naturally, I think that I remember everything,
could reconstruct (if not relive) that day,
moment by moment, word by word,
tone by tone, mile by mile.
And other days, including, later that summer
the drink in the Bois, just before I left, when
she said because I had brought her a jazz record,
"I think of you when I listen to the jazz"

But, of course, it is not true. .
Miles are lost. Moments are lost.
Music is lost. (All is lost she is lost)
I do not remember why she said,
There were flags in Bruges. For the Quatorze.
But I remember when she turned on the radio
driving to Bruges, so that we would have a beginning
and not be lost in silence in her small red car
driving to see the Memlings
that I had seen before, but did not then remember

Directions

Carefully connect the edge of before
To the raw sore edge of after.
Carefully remove the moments between
The touches, the fears, the smiles,
The 'don't we still loves'
And the sun on the Piazza Navonna.

The moment before the first moment
And the moment after the last
Should now form the continuous smooth line
That should have originally happened.

Take her laugh at the fountain
The light on her neck
The lunch near Windsor Castle
And put them under an aerated glass
Keep them cool and preserve them
And let nothing of before or after
Disturb their quiet and immortal
Changeless passion.

Continuities

The time before our now now interpenetrates with now
The barriers of our affair dissolve
And once again there is the New York Times
And all the world that it describes
Unchanged from as it was before I met you
And all our songs and promises
Have gone unheard by journalists
The world is empty again
And it is here
And you are not

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