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copyright © Sina Queyras, 2014
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Queyras, Sina, author
M x T / Sina Queyras.
Issued also in a printed format.
ISBN 978-1-77056-375-9
I. Title. II. Title: M x T. III. Title: M times T.
PS8583.U3414M88 2014 C811'.6 C2013-907676-X
M x T is available in a print edition: ISBN 978 1 55245 290 5.
Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital copy. To claim your ebook, please email [email protected] with proof of purchase or visit chbooks.com/digital. (Coach House Books reserves the right to terminate the free digital download offer at any time.)
About This Book
MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas acclaimed poet Sina Queyras posits as a way to measure grief. These poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: this is Queyras at her most powerful.
I have my dead, and I have let them go,
and was amazed to see them so contented, so soon
at home in being dead ...
– Rilke, ‘Requiem for a Friend’
‘Do not lecture me from sadness,’
lecture me from after, or under
sadness, from the scraping moment,
your forehead on coral, your feet
in the air.
– Anne Carson, Grief Lessons
ALTERNATING
MOURNING
With Alternating Mourning (AM), grief flows in both directions and may completely reverse itself. Far from being an unstable conduit for grief, AM allows for greater depth of feeling to flow more efficiently over greater distances. The downside to more deeply felt grief is a need for insulation to step down emotions for common transmission. Consumer mourning outlets vary according to countries, size of populations and equipment. The horizontal axis measures time, the vertical axis measures grief.
Alternating Mourning
Water, Water Everywhere
‘I see’ ‘with my voice.’ – Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette
Water, water, everywhere, my dead ones, and you wading through ferns to my window, a cat on a buoy, a rabbit on a paddle, a dog with a bowl in her mouth, water rising, water advancing and yes, yes, that is me, swimming through milk of sky, not a speck of barnacle underfoot.
Water, water, everywhere, bodies, gliding, feathered, furred, sweet pink and brown, your skins, you come to me with your blue eyes and your brown eyes, with your violet and green eyes, you come into my arms that hush and stride, Mother, Father, your legs that kick and strut, my pets, I carry you into my sleep, you come and I have saved my tuna water, I have made a meal of egg and rice for you, I have saved my best thoughts, too, I lay them at the foot of the bed and wait for you to slip under the door.
Water, my dead ones, and you with your ravaged look. It sometimes takes hours for you to face me, other times you have brought your own utensils, you come and I am open, you swim through my ribs.
My love, to love is to lose your love, to lose; the hand is emptied, if I turn away, if the rain stops, if I am silent … all the formulas for turning back time.
•
Grief is a century of death, and a century of death before that, and before that, I want to bring you into the fold, Death, I want to drag you right into the mall, the earth, which is made of death.
•
I think about Thích Nhát Hanh smiling every time someone puts her foot on the brake. I see the smiling Buddha in the brake lights too, but more importantly I wonder how he drives in those long robes and then I think of course he doesn’t drive, and it’s easier to find the brake lights amusing.
I found the brake lights of the car I rear-ended last month alarming. I was calling out to you, my dead ones, I was calling you home, and I smashed into something solid and I forgot about breath.
•
I want to love my memory of you, it’s not a conceptual feeling though I can attempt a grid of my feelings for you, I can calculate the number of verbs, and adverbs; I can leave a how-to diagram on the coffee table if you would like to look at it when I finally sleep.
•
I am feeling about you the way waves feel about the shore. You come at me in endless loops, your moods, the looks on your faces, my lost ones, more alive by the minute, and the colour in your faces tinting with the seasons.
•
I am not interested in what Bourdieu, or Kristeva, has to say about grief. I don’t want a grid, I want arms. I don’t want a theory; I want the poem inside me. I want the poem to unfurl like a thousand monks chanting inside me. I want the poem to skewer me, to catapult me into the clouds. I want to sink into the rhythm of your weeping, I want to say, My grief is turning and I have no way to remain still.
I am not interested in feeling by proxy; I go to the hollow when I want to empty, I go to theory when I want to sit with someone else’s thinking, I go to myself when I want to see you.
•
I am feeling about clover, I inhale and it honeys my lungs: if I finally do catch you and put my mouth to yours you will taste that summer.
When I am being torn apart, I don’t need you to point out the empty seed pods of winter.
You won’t find a couplet in the wild, my love; a sestina is a formal garden, a villanelle is the court, a sonnet is an urban
