Ma Mere L'Oye

"Here we hunt for shady corners; there is no fire at the Mallarmes', and Ravel is working. The big flies are humming. The dragonflies have thrived. They look like winged sausages."

Maurice Ravel to Ida Godebska in Madrid, from Valvins, September 18th,  1908.

a clock stutters the undergrowth into its largest form. grow, grow out of the purple home but do not leave. tendrils come around the fingers, come to the palms. here, open, a field for sunlight. the petals dry, the parachute ball opens into a full sphere. and your shoulders take the wind into their remembrance. that little turn, dégagé. could be anchored in a warm bed, a cool bed of swaying glass, where the pickerel kiss and leave. their flanks become the weeds. their flanks express an ambivalent current, a current which wants to love but has no form.

learn this with the governess. up the stairs in a chalk stroke, like a clock remembering the shades of her face. brow, temple. brow, temple, cheekbone, lip. the window, its shutters. the windmill unthreshed. is it such a long way from here? across the air, across the matchwood acres to your home. and still the loom is pouring hill and hill. 

keep for me the stores of gold. keep for me your heart. keep for me the winnowing of wheat into a bath of liquid sun.