Sur le Mur Cahun 1947-2017
David Annwn
Deep granitic
white hydra hermaphrodite
protozoan neural branching
Beneath this mask another mask
sun bathes the massive ancient church wall abutting the beach, and the right sides of her face and extended arm, as she is caught between sharp light and shadow
dendritic crystals
enacting chemin
a black, seemingly eyeless, blindfold
(an unsilvered mirror: my natal right eye)
wrack and polyp, beating
the bounds,
blocking a slipway
between sharp sand
as if she is being pulled forward by the cat: Nike
The feline is stationary
she has passed through shrubbery and over the inverted painted letters ‘PRIVATE PROPERT
sun low in the eastern sky sending sharp shadows of her legs and her cat, across the concrete
away from St Brelade’s
graveyard behind her
on the verge of the dead zone, effacement of human
rocks far out, bioluminescent
a loose chemise with cut-away sleeves reveals her thin arms and dark loose trousers which are tied with criss-crossing laces from the knees downwards
progressing barefoot over the top of an anti-tank barrier
led on by a cat to which she is connected by a twice-twisted leash
vegetation threatens to encompass
vocabulary and if on these surfaces
we speak the unseen photographer
if we’re lead by the cat-tail’s slant
‘Le chemin des chats V’ and placed in a sequence
crepuscular, dawn, elliptical
tapetum and retina
gathering light, cat sees
more inquisitively than you, puts out its paw, discovers the strange, flawless fragment of glass, primes claws on it, monitors images’ conformity – sniffs at mirror-backs
what will be we if we lead ourselves
if we lead ourselves on a leash as a queen
The italicised lines are new translations of lines from Claude Cahun’s Aveux non avenus (1930).
David Annwn, author of ‘Refractions through Selves: Claude Cahun’s icons of the Inner Search: psycho-dramas and photography’ (2017), helped convene the Claude Cahun Conference at Leeds Art Gallery, UK. In 2016, there was a collaborative exhibition of his poetry with calligrapher Thomas Ingmire’s work at the Book Club of California, San Francisco. His work is currently the subject of a poetry/graphics installation in central Leeds. His most recent book of poems is Dreaming Across the Wake Field (2016). He has work in E·ratio 11.
