Relation in Movement, 1977
BY LOGAN FEBRUARY
—after Marianne Boruch and Judith Nangala Crispin
The artist put summer light and rain
light on the list of materials for her
triptych. What was this “rain light”?
Light as rain or lit by rain? Fleeing
shame with no umbrella I ran
under cover of the dark curtain.
What had remembrance to do
with resemblance. Mirror, mirror,
semantic mirror. It told nothing apart,
left sights unpaired, me unprepared.
Whatever place I went they spoke of
Pompeii, of histories intricate as dust.
They asked how would I refine
my English now that the empress
was dead. I answered with artifice,
the saint’s contempt. As a night
in summer is still night and summer,
the road from shame led me to
shame’s back door. Had I not stolen
out of this nation? Transited?
Came the moon, at last, which gave
disrepair: vessel and voyager,
despair. Humanspeak.
By Heart We Know
BY LOGAN FEBRUARY
A leafblower’s futility.
All things landing, still, where they will.
Rice cake, pâte à choux, smoke from yours to my lips.
Eventually, eventually, is how to love these days.
Deluges of foliage, dry; old news from each of our countries.
I never learned these about you, two dogs, the deaths.
Dull reds, how quickly cardinals ruin a rough draft of sky.
