A boy writes his name in sand; then goes back to his holiday home.

The sea covers the boy’s name: it learns the name, and erases it.

Next day, when the boy is walking, he hears his name called from
beyond the shore, finds a way down to the beach and writes there the
sea’s name: sea.

The sea touches the name. “More, ” it says from along the water’s
edge, as if it has no image of where he is. So the boy teaches the sea
the word “see” and the rhyme “the sea sees me”.

“More, ” says the sea with a gurgle of small stones.

The boy tells it some colours – the colour of the sea at that moment,
of the sky at that moment, of himself as he believes, of some plants
he has learned to recognise.

“Ahhh,” says the sea, as if it had drunk when thirsty.

The boy goes home and other children come to play; but the sea does
not converse with them. It knows the name of someone else; it knows
its own name by that someone else; it knows some colours.

It tells its knowledge to itself ceaselessly.

***

Lawrence Upton:

Poet; graphic & sound artist. Recent publications wrack (2012); Memory
Fictions (2012); and Unframed Pictures (2011). Co-edited Word Score
Utterance Choreography in verbal and visual poetry (1998) with Bob
Cobbing. Commentaries on Bob Cobbing (2013). Journals: Artist’s Book
Yearbook, Book Arts Newsletter, Emerging Language Practices,
Experimental Poetics and Aesthetics, Journal of British and Irish
Innovative Poetry, Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Readings,
Sounds Rite. Second solo exhibition “from recent projects” September
2012 St James Hatcham. Makes text-sound composition with John Levack
Drever, Benedict Taylor and Tina Krekels. AHRC Research Fellow Music,
Goldsmiths 2008-2011. Currently Visiting Research Fellow Music,
Goldsmiths.

some details of pictures in
Imagens de Nada / Pictures of Nothing at All

Galeria do Salao Medieval
Largo do Paco, Braga, Portugal

trans. Tracy Ryan

I was not dreaming of Rose!

Rose came to the wood with me;

We said some things, I suppose,

Gone now from memory.

I was cold as a marble frieze;

My steps uncertain;

I spoke of flowers and trees;

Her eye seemed to say: What then?

Pearls the dew offered,

The undergrowth, parasols;

I went on, hearing blackbirds,

And Rose, nightingales.

Me: sixteen. I looked morose.

Her eyes shone, at twenty.

The nightingales sang Rose

And the blackbirds whispered me.

Rose, stretching from hip,

Lovely arm shaking to pluck

Blackberry from branch high up;

But I did not look.

Water ran cool and deep,

Over velvet moss-buds;

And nature in love asleep

In the great deaf woods.

Rose undid her shoe there,

And innocently put

Her small foot in pure water;

I did not see her bare foot.

I didn’t know what to say;

I followed her through the wood

Seeing she smiled on her way

And sometimes sighed.

I didn’t notice her beauty

Till long after we were out

Of the woods. Forget it, she told me,

But it’s all I have thought about.

(written 1831; from Les Contemplations, 1856)

1.

She makes the bed,

unmakes, precisely

in that order.

Sometimes, sleeps.

2.

Swedish meatballs, and

we exit

Ikea, finally,

safe as houses.

3.

Let down,

let down

the blinds.

A musical

high-pitched tone.

4.

Her mother sends the recipe,

so we

no longer have to.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Softly chanting shanty songs

I put my little boat to sea.

Coastline lights slowly shrink

blink            and            wink

white pinpoints disappearing.

Clouds hide moon and stars

so no horizon can be seen.

Only darkness all around

my little boat and me.

It has no sails     motor     oars

so drifts with tide and current motions.

But I’m never lost

becos I don’t know where I’m going.

Adrift with         Chaos         Destiny.

Missing the two loves left behind.

For a short time they’ll miss me.

Then I’ll be forgotten.

No real tragedy.

Just how things were meant to be.

Ending as it all began :

my little boat and me.

1

Despite its dislike for everything

not itself, the sand

likes trees. When they die

it buffs them

into a sort of stone, then attacks

the stone, till between

a night and a morning, they’re gone.

It also has no particular

quarrel with lizards that raise, first

their legs on one side, then the other’s,

from it; or snakes and fleas,

or humbler mammals; though no one could say

it supports them. When it reaches

the sea, dismissing

the green of coasts, it contemplates

no rival but an arriviste, and sees

(for all time is one

to sand) brackish shallows,

salt. It likes air,

though it could and will do

without it – likes

to rise with its help, rap playfully

on tanks, men walking, the remaining structures.

2

You might think the women compactly

hunched on cracked mud, wearing

wild dulled colors, with almost

their last portable property

in noses and ears, hair piously

and/or sensibly shrouded, are looking

beyond the wire at the

sand through a filter

of apprehension – the militias

might not be satisfied

this time with the last sacks

of rice and bottles of water

from the UN; or through layers

of ignorance, superstitious

mistrust of the camera, etc.; but

they see it well enough.

Wherever she tumbled I fell

up hill and down dell dale

and wherever we fell I lay I she lay

panting pantless that day

she me on top of me her

on the ridge of shifting sand

the sea pounding below our

frantic & ampersand

later we packed our gear

our thoughts regrets delight over bright as the moon

[later we left the beach

back to our lonely rooms]

a hug a kiss a quick look round

‘I’ll call you soon!’

trans. Tracy Ryan

When you close my eyes to the light, linger

As you kiss them, for they will have given

All that endures of loving passion

To you in the last glance of their last ardour.

By the funeral lamp’s unflinching glow,

Lean your sad, lovely face toward their farewell

So they can be imprinted with the sole

Image they’ll keep below.

And let me feel, before the coffin’s shut,

How we join hands upon the pure white bed

And how upon the pale pillow beside

My brow, your cheek rests one crowning moment.

And after, let me go far off, my heart

Preserving for you a flame of such strength

That even through the dead, compacted earth

The other dead will feel the heat.

(from Les Heures du soir, 1911)

My father had an upper lip that was quite long

Whereas my mother boasted one that was short;

Such is the intermixture of parenthood.

Who can discern the specific claims of ancestry

By this or that small detail? The nose or the jaw

Tell only so much,  and even that proves dubious.

And yet, seeing my aunt in her old age

Take on the attributes of her father – that Scottish nose -

Revealed to me the hidden clams of ancestry.

I’d never guessed before that she carried those genes

Seeing only herself and the world that she had made

But there it was, in the open at last.

We carry a long line of ancestry. My lip

May seem as if neither parent had claim

But  am continually taken by surprise each time I stare into a mirror.