a n n e b l o n s t e i n

return each to her mother's house


écrire son recire. or verbs for stroking. a sure
older than sure. splayed under the piano
admiring dandelions

                                             stretching the cracks
and her unshoed toes run sad or rule the sea

as she balances wreathlessly. faithful to sadness
she cannot pausing at the threshold of faces
with automatic doors. salts sentiment. allotropes
for a nephew

                                             washing with sand
to abrade shyness and

indefinite foreigness. she prescribes honey
for aches with responsibility — mix with lemon
for infections. a thought would unmask
perhaps squashed angels. watching with a nephew
her filling pencils with phosphorescent leads —
the flickering threads are a soul rune

or refiguration of the present. beige lace. wrapping
snowbright dreams. where she tangoes imperfectly
sears around the rule. hears unconvicted patterns
imperatively profuse bodies. pouncing
like nightcats. across a familiar isolation. as nuns
prepare pea cholent <in welches Werk bist du jetzt
vertieft?>

a night whispering. a true cold drumming. are and
routes lusher? she catches a memory inflections
fractional respondency. she will knot chromosome
and sentence. fringe pores. exoduce and
intronerate. heart sure sound real. at fever's
melody. poetry he wrote is natural. something
unseeable singing. moss spores. in greek
envelopes. shelter around a ruse. exstinctively
addressed. has the crystallized violet seal
an untrue order? she begins a cleanbeat <Death
is prerequisite to the growth of grass> in summer
they played in a hawthorn cave. or on atlantic
beaches before the waves brought in
tarred bladderwrack and consciousness
the missing of a passing afternoon. (the broken
gift.) they ate ice-creams. (the empty stick.) then
they played table tennis. and summer passed
and they returned to school. brother and sister. no
uncles. the rhythm of the poem the tide
before sunrise. understanding that tastes
muddy <linguistic diversity should be taken
as seriously as biodiversity>

like a blue probability. almost. when angels
dived into mouths. they tuned their songs to
the vintage bubbles. to reduction. to
unapprehended measures. and what they sang
reverberates in embryonic skulls. across
leading articles and strawberries

happeningness hingèdness herbrewness
whispered over a nephew's bones

                  a junction between edges. she pounces
her imagination with pollen from pears. smoke-
opaqued materials

                                             pussyfoots among
the fasnacht hens. while she watches for a walking
relationship — a relationship aligned by
microscopic divergences

his breath smuggles an audacity. beaten so thin
but she cuts it up again. one piece she eats
washed down with lemon wine. three she
beats again. until they can fly like an unrequited
question. because of the. ring: unbalanced
experiments. almost. returning us through
the beginning. in a soundless lightless explosion. or
extraplosion. paused in a timeless surface
the equations solved the sky shredded. the angels
crash overloaded with deleted memories
<Le poème est une diagonale qui raie le monde
comme la syntaxe est la diagonale du poème>

                                          O

imagine a box

         made from murine smiles     almost
     a yellow light stretched as the lining     as soft as
cooked rice     it holds her sandals routes rue
     like a problem     for a nephew spinning
stops     she hides a larousse under the laws

now imagine the box can fly     fueled by
tryptic suggestions     whenever uses fail     it
also brings three hairs of an answer     green
smoke     an inheritent     for fragments' sake
stroked with milk from lupin seeds <Alterslos
kann man als Mensch nicht werden>

<in welches Werk . . .> Rose Aüslander: Der Flügelteppich; in: Gedichte 1977–1979 (Ges. Werke Bd. 5), 1985, S. 313

<Death is prerequisite . . .> Robert Duncan: Nor is the Past Pure; in: The Opening of the Field. New York, New Directions, 1973 (first published 1960), p. 43
<linguistic diversity should . . .> Samantha Ellis reviewing Mark Abley: Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Languages. Guardian Weekly February 19–25 2004, p. 17

<Le poème est . . .> Paul Celan cited by Jean Daive: La Condition d'infini. 5. Sous la coupole. Paris, P.O.L., 1996, p. 154

<Alterslos kann man . . .> Sappho; cited by Herwig Maehler: Auch Sappho klagte über das Alter. Neues in einem jüngst publizierten Papyrustext. Neue Zürcher Zeitung Mittwoch, 1. Dezember 2004 ◊ Nr. 281, S. 44

unter der sonne


ephemeral grants. quiet in open rooms

                  and raindropped probabilities. a correspondent nell
climacterically

                                             at fainedness. knowing that one poem
will not redeem past throws <Die Verantwortung für das Auslöschen
eines Menschenlebens will im Grunde niemand übernehmen>
ephemeral grades. quiet in open rooms. awkward as habit. adopted
after a distance. quiet in open rooms them. into a flowerfall
of absorbant yellow. but beyond as necessity. scripturally slow light
to adapt after the distance <Il me reste d'être l'ombre parmi les ombres
                                             d'être cent fois plus ombre que l'ombre
                                             d'être l'ombre qui viendra et reviendra
                                             dans ta vie ensoleillée>

the acquisition

         but before with necessarily. such appearances but irregularly. her
moistly

                                    selective hands. with a mauved quality
this thought therefore comes. mitosing meiosing. proposing that
the pale yellow returns the pale yellow

and reciprocal probabilities to make a beedance about. her
mouldly. quiet implants open rooms. result to this moment. musked
marcescent. a way to. approaching only the means. to accomodate
a microtactics <Chacun sait que le jardinage n'est pas une science
exacte>

face replacement. converse intimate features. a voice held in a curious
beginning. fading roles. form the moment that her figure visibly (faults
and folds) around visibly figure her that moment the form. but between
the nodes. dreams inflated by photosynthesis. prior to any adventition
quotidian quantum conversations. leaves darkgreen with an inky
edge. membrane means. she approaches the paragraph
through citations cut as short as grass <Leur empreinte me suffit
pour croire qu'ils viennent seulement de refermer la porte>

if severely. quickened choices. positioned in positions. world of
melismas and mentalities

                                    such weedy evolutions. and distributions. of
the movement carried on by continuing for

                                                               a resin of space. when this
family contains a spiral <Schon als Kind habe ich immer von
der Schweiz gehört — man hat mir das Land als neutrales
Paradies geschildert> a residue of time. this family contains a pyralysis
and contrasanguinuity. quiet in open rooms. with cloud-filtered
stretches. in them the present drifts beyond the quiet to open rooms
<Zuerst sah das Paradies allerdings grau aus>

agapantha curled in sleep. thoughts circle through a cool old
afternoon. slowly through a vocabulary pruned to maintain its qualities
(pruning as the sensitive act). yleno has selected a variety with thorns
slightly hooked. this afternoon she found a canticle hesitating
around her heart <Ich kam in ein Asylantenheim — nach drei Monaten
durfte ich arbeiten> a rambling. seeing substance

                  contents with the colour of sneezes. and the garden
should have the benefit of visitors. stretching eyes. their noses
allocated too. world of aethers and allergies

                                                              and nell sending yleno a poem
dedicated to father hugo. who brought an early-flowering
chinese species to europe

                  before the sturdy hybrids
                  have dreamt their crimsons
                                                               whites and
                  pinks
                           a yellow rose
                  perfumes the present
                                                      with fugitive harmonies

the course of the slant of words and faces. different performances
of intensity. considering consciousness nell had rubbed the diminishing
elm soot into her own plasma. and raphed probabilities. thoughts wave
through a new wet evening <La rime est cette rose épuisée
qui s'affaisse>

                                                       O

and at times     in changeably     her going beyonding     passage from
lightless that can never reach black     the shared     torn between
four eyes and not charmingly     the scattered     affinity to
the period     soft adjectives that claim the adjectival as their attribute

sometimes here and someplace now sometime and someplaces
here     composition decomposition     put off the     the
lingering     passage from darkless that can never reach white     before
the sense in going to disconcerts     <....so perhaps eat afterwords???>

les oasis des pâtres s'endeuillent


über umgangsformen. "wringing out the shocked edges." its qualities
of chimerism

                           nude tree on hold. its qualities of
despite concreteness. "or with a lilac folding" : perfume of a self-trained
perhaps

"not quite the imperfect chain." lovely the way that nurture
resources. "the lovely foiling the real has an audience." raphed
responses. breathing with dreaming the natural. possibly pitched
participates. keeping the northern effort in frame

something remembered mistaken for a moth. the improvisional
chain. they implement a luce phase. a poreality. practising
the thoughts' rhythms. change or take away. wreathe selves
with hands. who wrote that an emotion could not preoccupy
an experiment?

"austere and answering the incidental chain." practise the thought
rhythms. a corporeality. crow notes as powerful as salts in sweat. what
touches the ear. remanded in the body. at precisely this reception
<den Ort geplündert und anschliessend einen Teil der Einwohner
lebendigen Leibes verbrannt>

                                 (but) go. (but) go! (but) get out!
                                      (but) go! get out! vanish.

"our opening." difficult as farewell and welcoming. its qualities
of concatenation

                           pointed as autumn pears. "because without sound

a not haemorrhages." overwhelmingly a half tone flattened by
wars. difficult as modewells and whetherings

"love with." the insidereal chain. read so to duplicate the song. reads
resentiments. "read so rehearses a hidden movement." the poised
after resting the words. their complex vows

"in what work are you abandoned?" distinctly simply intensing
daily reality enters and mocks security. unpeel a metemphysical
hate. "distinctly simply difficult to control intention." dark roles
employed as measured surprise. enough that such ways imitation
provides <der Konflikt könnte sich — ähnlich wie vor zehn Jahren
die Gewaltwelle in Ruanda — zu einem Völkermord ausweiten">

counterpatterns conducted to style its qualities of chambered
lightening for example. the infernalized chain. convected with a hunger
("scraping hours to speak of pleasure.") a part. for a diverged audience
the terms radiate and <the international response is to wait and see
what happens in a month's time>

                      bureaucratic goes. bern woes. ghost houses
                        (flatly:) go (resolutely:) go (sharper:) leave
                                      go × raus = disappear

out of what story. some wild words prized from remote presences

a matrix of after statements. remote notes pitched presently
and floating from

                                    recognition traditions our love : "thoroughly
there." that transparent dark

the individual attempt. these endless phrases for. "melodies
also magics occur as an option." "vibrating materials for results
that suggest not smother their fumes." rocks represence. "drops
another nevertheless for composure." their hands an approach to

the ear-touching tension. eat my unhale lipscape theme. "skill of
some regret." the insolvent chain. "and drink a lager." "dynamic rests
expanded and much is nothing gestating." they implement a pale cause
here

"timed and sapphoed." a shine before fireworks. "to our meaning
when." people in pain as difficult as other. scream. our moves
sometimes roughly sometimes smoother. an understanding of theory
a concentration on practice
                                     

or connects rather to an issue of situation     paling as
summer grasses     we might particularly deliberate     or really
practising the thoughts reveal their rhythms     practice that thought
rhythms     the introductory chain     details remnants energies
arousals migrations each desides     our moves sometimes

a furthermore within the furthermore     these endless fractures
for     removing with some kind of new face     melt the unsympathetic
phase     the ice chain     but the exact source of the line whispers
at unobtained     past our moves sometimes <Loss is always>

<den Ort geplündert . . .> jpk: Janjawid-Milizen in Darfur schwer belastet. Neue Zürcher Zeitung Donnerstag, 29. Juli 2004 ◊ Nr. 174, S. 2 ['sacked the place and finally burned some of the inhabitants alive']

<der Konflikt könnte . . . > Alexandra Zavis (summarizing Kofi Annan): «Sie töten jeden, der schwarz ist» Basler Zeitung Samstag/Sonntag 24./25. Juli 2004, Nr. 171, S. 5 ['the conflict could — as with the wave of violence in Ruanda 10 years ago — develop into a genocide']

<the international response . . .> Guardian Weekly July 30–August 5 2004, p. 11

<Loss is always> Glyn Maxwell: Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun; in: Michael Hofmann, James Lasdun (eds): After Ovid: New Metamorphoses. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, p. 75

Note:
    Simon* hat sich auch einen Teller geholt. Er sitzt abseits von den anderen. Seine Augen sind trüb, sein Gesicht aufgedunsen, und gibt man ihm den Hand, hat man das Gefühl, gewellten Karton anzufassen. Simon kommt direkt aus dem Gefängnis. Fünf Tage war er drin. Bis ihn Basler Polizisten nach Aarau fuhren (der Aargau ist sein Ausschaffungskanton) und sagten: «Lass dich nie mehr blicken. Go go go!» Die Aarauer nahmen ihn rein und stellten ihn gleich wieder raus: «Geh doch zurück nach Basel. Go go go!» Simon kann nicht mehr. Will nicht mehr. Yvonne Schepperle dreht sich ein wenig zur Seite und sagt: «Er ist depressiv. Er muss zum Arzt.» Versichert sich die Asylsuchenden nicht, aber die Pfarrei kennt zwei Ärzte, welche die Leute ehrenamtlich betreuen. Ob sie Simon noch behandeln werden ist unsicher. Er will weg. Weg aus der Schweiz. In ein anderes Land. Er hat schon Kontakte geknüpft und will bald gehen. Sehr bald. «Ich will mich nicht einfach verstecken. Ich will weg. Einfach nur weg.»

* Namen geändert

From Philipp Loser: Abgetauchte Asylbewerber: Trostloses Leben in der Illegalität. Basler Zeitung, Dienstag, 27. Juli 2004, Nr. 173, S. 3

anneblonstein lives in Basel, Switzerland, where she earns a living as a freelance translator and editor. She has published two full-length books (the blue pearl, Salt Publishing, 2003; worked on screen, Poetry Salzburg, 2005) and three chapbooks (sand.soda.lime, Broken Boulder Press, 2002; that those lips had language, Plan B Press, 2005; from eternity to personal pronoun, Heliotrope Press, forthcoming). Further poems from scroll will appear in 'Shearsman' 67/68 in 2006. Poems from the sequence correspondence with nobody can be found online at 'How2', while a section from the sequence dangerous skin at 'The Argotist Online', where an interview will also soon appear.