David Grubb
Proust’s Waistcoat
But nothing’s lost or else all is translation
and every bit of us is lost in it...
‘Lost In Translation’, James Merrill
Everything changes; nothing does.
The rooms repeating themselves and even the darkest hours
voiced with conversations. Memory is a blue hat worn
by a woman with a small moustache. Or is the woman memory
and the blue hat our translation? If so, what of the small
moustache? The adventure of love portrayed by angel’s wings
mammoth as the stacking of Manhattan. From Ellis Island
you witness the building’s bending light
and just over there is Hart Crane’s dream bridge and.
Everything changes; nothing does.
We were discussing the complexity of refusals and all
I could think of was Proust’s waistcoat. It could
of course have been a cupboard filled with girls
or a dream in a drawer or a letter never invented
but the waistcoat’s meaning was more. Is that
a black swan over there or a peacock waiting
for evening or the octopus again? Or is it
more simply James Merrill getting out his words again
as we believe in the present and all that it does to the past.
Lost in traditions of self we invent the future
and sometimes the loss flies out like a moth,
flies out across mosaics of meaning.
Getting out the words again;
everything changes, nothing does.
The whole of love somewhere in this translation,
this meaning waiting still to greet us.
Page(s) 40
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