Jean Donnelly: The Soul Heals
the soul heals to saturate literature
the first falsehood
of literature is that
our species with names
incorporates chance
as the first line of fact
the soul likewise
only glances
the justification
for parables
bitter though it may
appear a stance
& a gauge of language
don’t the fates object
is here
normally
what is attendant
upon modes of writing
adopted by men
crying in subjugation
continuously
to the self-same
treasure
labor situated
actually
inside
the lecture
in effect
when one commences
to write within
a window of regard
a middle distance
emerges
that the soul might heal
under a frantic mouth
night sequesters the travel
couched at information
vapors of honorifics that support
a trove of returning hate
the ceiling for what might
be lit or acquired
& finally acquiesced
by one certain force
whipping the hours
with syllables
time is a tactless
command to be
also the structure
of home
bearing
hallucinatory
articulations
& the drone
of populace
adroit & tracing
seen &
unseen signs
noise that sings down
the smallness of being
(like pinning the tail
on the donkey)
is being not
antsy
a scrambling
to add or detract
from the humble
part of the intellect
what is
the humble part
what is it
that part might say
what is
its encore
what dances
at the sky
with the hours
& the purview
of victory
with all that is
the labor
of others
signs see a force
in each instance
crying out (again)
& blazing
without more
reason what is put
more than defined
by words
what comes & places
its intense source of light
& the ideas that function
to allow the day
in the ear
in the mind
O might the soul heal
with a monstrous love
placed by a ruse
in the horrifying mind
we think a brash
tactlessness is contrary
to us & to our time here
with language
lies drape sense
& its desire
for reciprocity
all our infant labor
over the ages
overtures to
the humid doors
of a detonated center
all that we enforce
in doors of ink &
inordinate sounds
an indelible
glass coast
between
laws & rights
while the soul heals
it enters
the mirror
& truth
obligingly
remains drunk
& clotted
ABOUT THE TEXT: “The soul heals to saturate literature” is from a collection of liberal homophonic readings & orthographical transcriptions of poems in French from the collection Pièces by Francis Ponge (1899 – 1988). They in no way reflect the precise, nearly clinical, and often wry descriptions of objects that populate Ponge’s prose poems. They are sites of textual encounter and their process entailed a listening at the threshold of the material traces of Ponge’s poems. The sounds of phonemes, the indexical traces I read, the images I found or that were called up were soundings at the depths between languages where I heard the cadence of something not my own though I was present hearing it.
Jean Donnelly is the author of Anthem (Sun & Moon) selected by Charles Bernstein for the National Poetry Series and the julia set (Edge), a chapbook. Her poems have appeared recently in Verse and Boog City. She lives in Exeter, New Hampshire with her children.
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