"The notion of elsewhere was beyond her:'

                                                          Johanna Drucker, Otherspace: Martian Ty/Pography

The world I see—there—here—is the world I remember. What is to
come is behind me. As I look back. . .

                                   lute, skull, globe, hour-
                                   glass, and

                                   [end of
                                   year]

                                   clutter

                                   books, music, instruments of
                                   war, astronomy, elements

                                   of the liturgy
                                   viol with a broken

                                   [this century, as
                                   past as any]

                                   string, sextant, compasses, candle
                                   the candle

                                   forest

                                   church in
                                   ruins, the churchyard

                                   extinguished

                                   pillar of
                                   fire

I have a terrible habit of remembering the death of people who are still
alive, killing them off by an act of memory.

     False memory, I suppose I should call it, but sometimes a person
whose death I remember is in fact dead and my memorial in that case
seems no different in character.

     Until, by some chance or other, I discover that one I have killed still
lives. Perhaps he phones me.

      Or I run into her on my way somewhere.

      Or I find an obituary:

       someone I killed long ago is now dead.

                                                   pushed

                                                   particular

                                                   attached to
                                                   the body, a counter-
                                                   series

                                                   soul of the

                                                   skeleton, lower
                                                   brain, sea-horse and
                                                   almond

                                                   you who follow me are not
                                                   my children

Rain beats at the window, while from the other side precise daylight,
gray under a comprehensive cloud but brighter than I would have
expected for such a gray day, filters through.

    But no, this I beheld with eyes closed and, I suspect, before waking had
broken my sleep's regular rhythm.

    I saw it—think, or thought, I saw it—in a dream.

    The day, awake, is not at all like that.

                                                         unhandled, cannot
                                                         be imagined, hypothetical
                                                         suicide

    ...can turn up at any moment

                                                         a place in the
                                                         lattice, noonday on
                                                         earth or

                                                         beneath earth

                                                         gloomy boundary, world
                                                         or not world

                                                         musk mingled
                                                         with orchids, countless
                                                         stars in ruin

                                                         battle to the
                                                         death, settling nothing but
                                                         place of burial

I see, so often, glanced in a mirror, the door just going shut.

    (Negative.)

    (North, vague image of Jealousy.)

    Color reversal.

                                                         agility
                                                         clarity
                                                         subtlety

                                                         [dowries]

                                                         impassibility

had not occurred to her that he...

                              strange behavior, accomplished

                              this

                              dragonfly groups, force-
                              sensitive organs

                              exhibition

                              block and ax

                              pillar of
                              cloud

who said?: Thought will not go far in a negative direction, so things are
always worse than we think.

                              up-and-down

                              scarcely able to
                              speak for weeping, heavy

                              grasp on my arm

                              machine, universal

                              gates of torment, mimic
                              [lost to this world]

                              mourned as dead, forgotten

                              dying

                              can scarcely weep, for
                              talking

                              down, up

                              a noise which I could call
                              shouting

                              pillar of
                              salt

...into

out of which...

                                                         strange beauty

                                                         trees
                                                         caught in the hearsay