Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop [USA]

FROM FLAT WITHOUT KEY

A

1
The plants are at war with one another

2
Plants are at war
and anxiety arises from the operation of the death instinct

3
At any rate
plants, war, anxiety, the death instinct
arise now and again

4
Plants at war
anxiety and death instinct
arise, if “outside” means awareness,
with awkward trompe-l’oeil

5
At any rate, warring plants
compete even with us in anxiety
when tromple-l’oeil images arise out- or in-
side—of course awkward
always

D

1
If I dream of monkeys

2
If I monkey with dreams
they come down from the trees in the night

3
monkey dreams
come down from the trees
this does not describe the female sex

1
Putting English on words

2
English words
swerve every which way

3
In English
every swerve is just
enough of an event

G

1
As the cars gear up to gridlock

2
As the gears lock
in the gray limousine

3
As the gears lock
in the gray of the city
it’s not the squeeze of gravity

4
As gears grind
in gray cities
gravity grows lighter than
a goose on your grave

1
Our lives now being language

2
Our lives’ luggage now
carried into longer lines

3
Our lives now lumber
in lines would break the slow decline
with leaps and boundaries

4
If our lives in slow decline
broke into lines like thinking
the way language leaps
in the lean perspective of a window

5
Then our lives’ decline
would think lines
the way language leaps across voracious emptiness
yet leans on it — a figure of impossibility
able to grow leaves from lack of ground

6
As lives lose track
lines break into thought
leaping, empty, across language
to lean on figures
growing groundless leaves
in what land? on what subjects?