Notebook: 5/18/79 [continued from 1/28]

Gradually these symbols
enter into an orchestral architecture,
varieties of scales and contrasts:
small buildings & enormous cars.
At home, the letters, they're not in
ordinary English, bespeak thousands
of images of our moments together.
A puppy died, that distance woke me
out of my revery, actually made
me strong enough to leave. Stop
making me feel guilty, English, I'm
not your victim, I won't be
transparent motion for you, scattering my
energies aside, an onslaught of
conflicts. Too much gravity in
English, too much clumping
around, too much stumbling, walking,
running & hiking. In French,
English is quiet. Its
stillness outlines my future,
a private horoscope, portions
of memory, English a shortcut
to meaning, French an elongation
of thought, or thought preceding
thought, space for manifestations,
small quotes capture monolithic
presences, shape a steep angle to
the immediate token word. I
was also still talking to you
in English, thinking in French,
elaborating a labyrinthine dialogue
between 3, 4, 5 even 6 women,
thunder clasps their throats, pleasing
them sexually separately.
Maybe we really split
when you destroyed that housedress
you knew I loved the best, you
didn't want to tell me in Engish
how good you felt about me, you
had to hide it in your Boston
accents, while I was translating
all of it into French, dreaming it
into hieroglyphics I thought were
all about someone else- no, no.
Not a formula, something to
digest & simplify, too complicated
to organize. Sure,you got me
to shower in English, but the
conception, which will initially
appear confusing, cacaphonous,
will eventually explode into
French, imagining itself as a
Babel of voices and tongues- frozen
like the flat skyscrapers seen from
the Brooklyn shore
at twilight.

(to be continued)