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An orchestral version of Mussorgsky’s The Great Door (or Gate) of Kiev from his Pictures at an Exhibition, just for reference, since it threads through the poem as a musical motif.
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Into the Lollipop Light
Father of painted wood
as when in a brimming hour
Mussorgsky sparks the air
with harems, a souk
its beggars, a brief
swarm of bees.
The Dead.
Speaking in a dead tongue.
The Great Door of Kiev.
Father. Fork in hand
conducting.
His jade traced
with mercury.
His crown forged
of tin.
The one father who dying
asks she stay beside him.
Instead she runs into
the naked air.
Running from the father
who had abandoned her
in a place of his choosing.
(Even now such things happen.)
Exiled she
had been left to drift
between Ether and
Earth.
::::::::::::
Her father sleeps
in the spare room.
A room
unchartered and
enigmatic.
Its shadows pooling there
where two walls collide.
When he awakens
his loneliness is incalculable, a
savage loneliness
unquenchable, somehow
familiar.
Her father who
in his decrepitude
wanders the interstellar mall
bewildered by
the proliferation of irreverent
forms suspended in an
unfamiliar air.
Its parakeets
spawned in jars
all the colors of candy.
Shuddering.
In the lobby
a broken machine leaking
something sweet.
Her father on the lookout
for a thing he can recognize.
The nest of a bird.
The spine of a book.
Yet the shop girls know him
boldly call out:
Hey, there, Professor!
Tired as hounds.
Perched on the small bones
of their feet.
Their faces, the faces
of mendicants.
What’s this? she wonders.
Hesiod, he tells her.
Read it, he reassures her
if only to pass the time.
Pass the time, he says it again
his eyes spilling over.
We must . . .
pass it . . . well.
Stitched with roses
she smells of vanilla.
Out on a limb
leaning into the radiant future
craning her neck.
Say! she says. And: Oh! Professor!
Ashamed, he turns away.
She would console him
touches his sleeve
for her father is grieving.
On another day
the same girl, apocalyptic
finds him, whispers with urgency:
Sir! The ceiling!
The ceiling is about to fall!
Hesiod. He tells her. It’s lovely.
Grinning like a boy.
This is when Death enters.
Dancing sideways
his hands in his pockets.
::::::::::::
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In the mornings
she fries him bacon.
Make it crisp, he says
because she won’t.
(speaking of the wife
already at the mall shopping early.)
Outside the window
the day breaks open
yolk leaking across
the sidewalk, the lawn
the streets.
After breakfast
together they walk to the mall.
Above the highway
the light changes as
in the distance an
incomprehensible meadow
rises in a cloud of dust.
At the edge of town
a train shrieks
a beast from another world
entirely.
Look: Right there on the pavement
something irretrievable.
Something is the matter.
If only we could put our finger on it.
::::::::::::
He says: I’ll take you to lunch.
There’s a pub. Tables made of wood. You can touch it.
The darkness pooling beneath his eyes
even then.
The mall
Thoth at the entrance, scowling.
Yet they are fearless.
Walk right in.
Into the Lollipop Light.
In the lungs:
strange molecules.
The colors of patriotism are:
cinnabar, arsenic, sulfur, thallium.
::::::::::::
Over lunch they argue about
Carl Jung.
His dubious mysticism.
(Their moments of intimacy
have always been arcane.)
As meanwhile
in the proximate world, the girls
lost in time, weightless
ruled by uncertainty
drift among fields of
incomprehensible things.
Fish swimming in cellophane
hanging like snacks from racks.
Such small events, and yet . . .
The mall. That will one day
erupt. Shredding:
inventory, staff, Saturday shoppers.
All this.
A rosy mist.
A gritty dust.
A space as big as lies and yet
it cannot contain such a
surfeit of bewilderment.
::::::::::::
One day near the tracks
down the way
a girl reads a book—Oh! It is weird!
Yet somehow compelling
She finds a pearl
lodged in her ear—
although it is her day off
and she miles from the event.
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She is running.
She is running in streets empty of sirens
deep in stillness
past the living
trees, beneath the
bruised moon its
diligent scribe suspended
in contemplation. The hour drifts
beneath a sudden gathering of clouds.
Her lover waiting
in an unfamiliar room.
He sees her approach.
Steps into the late afternoon.
They meet at the curb
in a confluence of rivers.
He folds her to him
as in the radiance she thinks:
children of light we stray.
They come together
in the sudden rain
beneath a sky unhinged.
Their losses sweeping down
veiling, unveiling their faces.
She says: I come to you
as my father leans into his departure.
We have a hour. An hour, only.
They are seeking
to resolve a mystery.
They are seeking
the garden at the
confluence of everything.
The colors of longing are:
white dolphin, golden toad, black rhinoceros,
pink headed duck.
All the colors of paradise.
She thinks his kiss tastes of
limes, of salt.
She thinks his face is
a star.
Together they stand in
the mammal rain.
She has known him two days.
The seconds as sacred as time and space.
They swim together in the room’s ocean
the hour licking it’s forepaws
its eyes of green gold.
The hour no bigger than
a lace wing.
A planet secure as a stone.
Everything safe within
a cage of stone.
Everything breathing
crystals of graphite.
A planet of savage power.
A girl and her lover
suspended in
a sanctuary.
A golden age reduced
to an hour.
All this.
As on another continent
a photographer catalogues
vanished species of birds.
These she finds
in museum drawers
stashed in boxes—
shoe boxes, cigar boxes—
white cotton blooming there
where their eyes
have gone missing.
A small immensity. And yet.
Some kind of impropriety.
Somewhere else a courtyard
dissolves in smoke
a rubber ball
rolls into the street
a child’s head
rolls into the shadows.
A planet smashed with a hammer like a skull.
A planet/circus ruled by clowns.
A malignant planet
the knowledge of its crimes
coagulating. Corrupting everything.
Her ankles wired together.
Her lips blue with cold.
Kept in a kennel.
Asleep in a box.
Awake in a cellar.
Concealed in the shadows.
A planet free of affliction
its surface sparking
with the luster of a thousand moons.
A planet ruled by immediacy a
tender urgency, a fearless loving.
A planet brimming with significance.
Its busses infested with sorrow. Where
beneath the bridges the penitent homeless dare not
acknowledge one another.
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One day a flock of birds falls to the pavement.
The next day a flock of birds falls into a meadow.
Their beaks stained blue.
Their small feet bound with wire.
Somewhere a prisoner hogtied with wire.
Left that way.
Made to breathe water.
On another day a flock of geese
come to rest on a pool of mercury.
The colors of longing are:
the hands, the feet growing progressively darker.
A red ball rolling into the street.
A white tooth found at the beach.
A shoe brought in by the blue tide.
A cinema at the end of a corridor
where an aquaintance
had received a bullet to the neck.
A planet awash in charity.
A planet up to its eyes in serenity.
Planets like beacons in the abyss.
A planet where a lover
prepares quail for his beloved
browns pine nuts for the rice
pomegranate seeds
sparking the plate.
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When her father awakens
the world is greatly diminished.
It streams silently past.
His mind once given to rapture
the many of species of birds
their names such as . . .
such as . . . p . . .
parro . . . t . . .
parrotkeet.
And there was
a daughter.
The guilt that corroded everything.
He awakens in an enigmatic room.
One enigma after another.
This is when the tigers assemble and leap.
This is when he calls out pummeled with stones.
This is when she rises
kisses her lover’s open hands.
Collects her things, begins to run
runs oblivious of the
cracks in the sidewalk.
The cracks in the sky.
That morning she had read to her father.
Cortazar: From The Observatory.
After he had whispered
into her ear:
I will now leave the world like an eel.
His smile all at once tender and ironic.
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Once in the evenings
when she was small
her father would tell her
wonderful things.
How Plato believed
in a True Earth a
a True Sky—
and this
illumed by
a True Light.
Unlike our world
wedged between mud and rock
ruled by unknowing.
Light as thought
the inhabitants of True Earth
lived on islands in the air
like Laputans.
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The last time they enter the mall together
her father says:
welcome to the Subterrestrial Realm.
He warns her of its seductive amulets
yet examines the watches
with such fascination
they are immobilized for an eternity
as if bewitched.
She can tell he is thinking of Plato
thinking of a True Earth.
(She is well acquainted with
his stubborn wistfulness.)
The ceiling, he says, will surely collapse.
But, perhaps, not today.
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When she was a child
he told her everything is made
of molecules. But for the molecules.
They are made of something
smaller.
These in another universe
could be planets.
Their names:
Zâzêl
Hasmââl
Barsâbêl
Samiel
Sometimes she thinks
she is that child
awake in the morning’s first hour.
The floor of her room
scattered with planets.
Some have rings.
Their moons, the moments
of crystal of amber
firefox moments
firefly moments
in ceaseless agitation.
With her crayons
she draws the gods
their yellow chairs
marking the poles.
Their bright faces
unmoved by the passage
of the lunar years.
The gods. Sitting astride ostriches
the size of camels.
Every hour a planet orbits the room.
The many planets
burning the eyes.
Those with atmospheres
inhabited with things with wings.
Sentient. Philosophical.
In all the best colors.
Some planets are like Earth.
Only more so.
Their oceans so salty
you can walk
from one continent
to the next.
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It is curious
that such a father
with whom she has traveled so far
will abandon her.
That he, in his folly
will cut off her feet
just as the ogres are said to do.
Father. From the bottom of the well
from the corner of the room
from deep within the sea
I called your name.
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She finds her father
as she left him
in the spare room
recumbent
like a young lion
or a child.
Folded together
his fists protect his heart.
She says: I am here.
He stirs.
Touches her wet sleeve
a wet lock of hair.
Does not ask: Where were you.
Says only: Thank you.
Just beyond the open window
the rain has freshened everything.
A handful of birds spire
scatter like seeds.
This is when his wife enters the room.
Pills sparking the palm of her hand.
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That night she dreams
she had not left him
had stayed beside him.
Had made him a vestment of jade
finally articulated.
Had left his face unmasked
knowing beneath their lids
the whites of his eyes were blue.
That under the protection
of the sacred color
her father would not suffer.
Yet, in other, more recent dreams
he persists, asks: Where were you?
She tells him:
When you betrayed me
I tumbled through space
like a shard of ice.
Only now have I found
my footing, can walk without reeling.
Only now have I
retrieved my name.
In her dream, the afternoon
is long over.
They are alone together.
She rises, says this final thing:
If I were still your daughter
I would sew for you a shirt
painted with bees, the eyes
of Horus.
I would cover you thus
to keep you safe.
And I would provide a map
so that you would find your way
from star to star
far from the nefarious places.
And I would assure
that a certain melody be played
one that you loved:
The Great Door of Kiev
when at the very last
your ashes were placed in the ground.
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—Rikki Ducornet
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The author of nine novels, three collections of short fiction, two books of essays and five books of poetry, Rikki Ducornet has received both a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award For Fiction. She has received the Bard College Arts and Letters award and, in 2008, an Academy Award in Literature. Her work is widely published abroad. Recent exhibitions of her paintings include the solo show Desirous at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2007, and the group shows: O Reverso Do Olhar in Coimbra, Portugal, in 2008, and El Umbral Secreto at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Santiago, Chile, in 2009. She has illustrated books by Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Coover, Forest Gander, Kate Bernheimer, Joanna Howard and Anne Waldman among others. Her collected papers including prints and drawings are in the permanent collection of the Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago Chile, the McMaster University Museum, Ontario, Canada, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
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