Two Poems
by David Rushmer
Hidden By Leaves
the last line
spoke of this life
“floating a dream that vanishes
lift their eyes
carry them to
all directions
on a journey
he grasps at
the air
there is an attempt
that which remains unsaid
words are
landscape
image
stand out against the snow
accidental, of the beautiful
disappears in mirrors
to further place and time
so often attains
the eternal
and the movement
of our feelings
and elsewhere in the world
to write
the only
root If we
examine
forms
of those who remain
to reflect
changes
the location of the grave
with almost pleasurable expectation
to move
to the next world
these preparations
toward
the dying, allowing
sometimes
a collection
the essence of all things
empties
to the world beyond
death or the house of its relatives
merges into
contact
who calls the dead
in midsummer
to their place of birth
it is said
effigies, or
bodies of water
a force superior
for his most private thoughts
hidden by leaves
the boundaries of this world.
Written Off
I.
following sentence
beneath furnished experience
writing the destruction of voice
every point neutral
oblique space slips away identity
the body writing doubt
no longer acting outside itself
voice origin enters death
consciousness centred on his passions
as if the end transparent
point language to the place
leading activity
to pure himself
fragment of the movement being
disappointment entrusting the hand
the principle experience itself
an empty process to be filled
an emptiness outside to exhaust it
an act of writing utterly
transforms the absent
divided lives work simultaneously
in no way a being there is no other
time eternally an operation of rare formno other act is uttered
II.
I sing having buried the pathetic hand
passion and necessity
the hand cut off
a field releasing a space
tissue drawn
from the centres of eternal gesture
never to rest himself
the interior to translate the dead
the passion draws tissue
of deferred multiplicity
the thread and the space not pierced
evaporates a system of literature
liberates its source
nature woven this perpetual duplicity
drawn from and entering into one place
focused hitherto the space inscribed
holds together a trace it sets aside
writing the birth of death.
Works by David Rushmer have appeared in a number of journals including Angel Exhaust, Great Works, Moria and 10th Muse. Recordings of his works are now featured online at Archive of the Now. His most recent pamphlets are The Family of Ghosts (Arehouse Press, Cambridge, 2005), and Blanchot’s Ghost (Oystercatcher Press, 2008). Sources for the poems are: for “Written Off,” The Death of The Author by Roland Barthes, and for “Hidden by Leaves,” the introduction to Japanese Death Poems by Yoel Hoffman.
