Montpeyroux Sonnets 6

And once again I wish it were the past
and I were joking with Marie-Geneviève
in her cluttered car…she, still alive,
cat yowling on the back seat, with our dest-
ination, Pénestin, the sea, at last
close by. She’d stretch canvas at night, engrave,
draw surreal seas. A double vitrail she gave
me’s over my bed, at home…Where’s home? A list
follows, places that were, or felt as if…
Manhattan, north London, Hamra, le Marais…
If I could go somewhere, where would I go?
Up to the 6th floor of the rue Barrault?
The T-marbuta garden? Or just stay
here, fan whirring overhead, one more hot day?

Fan whirring overhead. One more hot day,
dependent on “devices” with their pass-
words that lock me out. On the terrace,
between two lines of laundry, quickly dry,
a black and white cat stretches, stares at me,
and bolts over the wall, delinquent grace
not quite domesticated. Fixed in place
by heat, I vegetate. Bolt over my
own wall, be…where? The one good restaurant’s shut
after disastrous fire. The hairdresser
“fermé pour cause de maladie.” A cat,
a clothesline where old T-shirts dry. Elsewhere
stays elsewhere, on a map, hovers in air,
shapeshifts on wind, before the wind gets hot.

Shapes shift on wind, before the wind gets hot
and static. Heat hangs like a bad smell
or a headache some unavailable
pill could disperse. I think I’m resolute,
remaining unrecumbent, so I sit
under the fan upstairs dispensing cool
air when the sun drops from its canicule
zénith, when it can only circulate
heat. I want to wonder. I want to want
something, someone. There’s equilibrium
in hungers, with their surplus energy
refocused: lust to generosity,
avarice endowing a museum,
gluttony cooking one more ratatouille.

Gluttony, to cook more ratatouille
in this heat. In fact, my stomach’s sour.
I sit in the same place another hour
under the spinning fan. I want to be
where? In a body let’s say forty-three
years old, taking a stroll in a spring shower,
discussing sex, or politics, or power…
As if! If “she” were spared “military
opérations,” plague, famine… I sit on privilege
like a cushion, even if my spine
hurts, mouth is bilious, the dull facts of “age”
omnipresent. I read what Josephine
Jacobsen wrote late. Sybille Bedford, eighty-nine?
I think of Fairouz last time she went on stage.

I think, was Fairouz, last time she came on stage
(it may have been last week) as plagued with aches
in her articulations? But the breaks
in her voice were art, sorrow and rage —
Beirut, a melody poised at the edge
of keening, longing. She, I, who? awakes
mourning our irrevocable mistakes.
Zakaria Tamer’s tiger in a cage
sulked for nine days, then ate what he was fed
the tenth. And the story takes me back
not to this fable or another, but
to “seasons of translation,” head to head
—some dictionary’s hint takes up the slack—
between what might have been, and what was not.

Between what might have been and what was not,
estranging decades. The estranging rain
falls on the street. September’s here again.
Umbrellas, bikes, would knock you down without
stopping (did once, broke my wrist) in fleets, flout
traffic lights, and a pedestrian
fends for herself. My back has made me mean
as watered wine, gluten-free bread. I blot
bleak thoughts out, reading headlines on a screen
here, in the city, up four flights of stairs.
But on the screen, the same cluster of wars
detonates daily. Sunlight, change, change, pain,
acedia. A day dumped down the drain
with what was not, although it might have been.

What was not, although it might have been
worse than it was, was still a train-wreck. Why
did I stop going to the bakery,
buying pears, chicken breasts, eating, when
September ripened, spread its ample plen-
itudes? Platitudes! With despair in my
face, up close, every diminishing day,
I locked the door that ought to stay open
to people, possibilities. Those nights
and days a blur. I slept. I bathed. I dressed
and sat there, mind blank, everyone I missed
missing. I was dragged out, and forced
alive, under the vilifying lights,
where once again, I wished it were the past.