Cities without names
“in your eyes always / absence’s present eludes”
when reality overfloods
you say cities without names
trees suddenly too tall
for your memory of childhood
in your eyes always
absence’s present eludes
the great river of your intentions
_______________
cities because we’re honest
with our shadows of a new world
buried deep in time and emotion
cities filled with our smells of the world ending
with its pyres, its widows,
its bridges passages and rivers of ink
_______________
cities when someone shoves you
says sorry sorrow because of the noise and the rain
seizes around the waist
a melody to lift up the present
the strong perfume of change which fascinates
you every morning still
you love humanity with arms swinging
without oxygen in the middle of its shining debris
Known for her sensual, queer poetics, Nicole Brossard writes in an elliptical style in these poems from her series “Villes.” These cities are not realistic, rather they’re unfamiliar and uncanny. The lack of specificity suggests an obscured but unforgotten past, and a quest “to meet the horizon the day after the horizon.”
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