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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets A World Re-Composed SIMON PERCHIK _______________________ ■ Before you even saw a lake or a river or an ocean or lifted half asleep with stars washing over you -hours old and already you hear the nights left over from the Flood and in the distance one wave waiting for more darkness as if it had a twin somewhere -your first bath -by instinct another minutes later, an overflowing the way each tide never forgets the other -two baths and after those nothing matters, though all your life you wait for just a trace some splash you almost believe you heard before -just born and the warm hands under you reaching out from the soft waves -before you ever saw water you learned to cry -a natural! bathed and the night beginning to recede to feel its damp sand creak against what must have been the Ark or the sun or your cradle breaking apart under these stuffed animals -a single dove clinging to the rail and the first morning. [541]
■ These clouds are never sure climbing as if the sky is still mountainside -will migrate till they're cold then graze on snow, growing huge, dark though when stars can't be found they sniff for stones the way all trails are marked break apart half ice, half some valley falling toward evening -you can hear them single file and even in sunlight each drop takes on an unfamiliar shape becomes the mourner who follows on foot from darkness to darkness as snow or thirst or an unknown distant path with both sides holding on tight to you to the still warm dirt, or nothing -she's been dead for years yet the rain stays frozen in this small stone that splashes when your hands close over tighter and tighter till it dangles motionless and between your fingers and your lips as if it could say something, tell you when. [542]
■ You wet one hand with the other the way Narcissus looked at that night sky smelling from flowers, naked shoulders could be anything in the dark -with just your fingertips prod an old cradlesong and this sink still listening for seawater. You almost hear the tides locked in some death swoon slowly freezing though the sun will always lean too far as if it too wanted to hear what it sees in the outer air the glossy darkness it can't recognize half mountainside, half needing more water -you bathe every night, twice a night one hand scalded by the other by the sun the sun looks for -could be an old lullaby led by the sky that flows across and the hand you thought you had forgotten. [543]
■ You read these notices, half bronze half marble, half the slow, climbing turn that has something to do with your arms -they make a presentation, offer the dead page after page :trees still standing birdsong stuffed with newspaper and ponds and after each frost the almost invisible cracks -there's barely room to kneel. It happens every Spring, you wait for the ice to overflow loosen the darkness around all graves -what you unfold is that fountain continually leaving the Earth to bring back these names where mourners bathe their hands rotting in the open and from your side the shadow already going about its business. [544]
■ Like those old men on the ward afraid to deal, just shuffling cards again and again and again till the rattle frightens Death itself -on winter nights the darkness needs still more dread and I sweep snow across my kitchen floor as every scarecrow :this threadbare broom tries to get a better grip -the hungry flakes aren't fooled, chew the straw and from its windswept frost a droning, shapeless giant appears as if my heart would become the world bring back the sun by morning -all night nothing I point to is safe or touch -Death listens to our hands -I held a broom and now it's winter, even this floor is afraid -this snow needs a feast :a last meal, more straw clanking boards and chairs, served from loosened sleeves and scattered legs again and again and the sun is blinded by the light, will fall between all the other evenings again into the world as if Death doesn't hear the days flare out and in my hand the snow, the straw and staring. [545]
■ -to be the darkness just forming the way stonecutters still begin -with each fountain, closing its eyes and these stars too trying night after returning night -the trembling rush that would become my heart and even the Earth not spared once it stops to rest -back to being the heaviness that's now my arms and the sun years away -where else! a windowsill weatherbeaten, exactly the same weight underwater -here I can count backwards, send off my lips to the bottom that has no sound yet -slowly at first and my bones even now kept hollow for birds, roots that devour morning after helpless morning unable to climb -even now I lean this side, then that as if you are here still rising from a sea, alongside clouds -a gentle sound starting up left empty and your beautiful body filling with flowers not yet these sweet smelling stars half way between my hand and my other. [546]
■ Pulling the mirror closer till an old love note almost ignites again -even two suns are not enough changing colors just for the fragrance her breasts give off. She cups her mirror the way a sundial winds down and the light slows for evening -you will recognize these beauties the golden shoulders now invisible brushed among the leaves and cinders filling her arms with arms, eyes with eyes and your fingers on fire. [547]
■ This puddle needs repairs jack hammers -I will rebuild from bedrock, knock loose each splash crumpled, one on top the other -will repave so you can rest on water trailing off -in your sleep the rain the fish beside you rise and fall motionless and you listen -I am building an ocean and from its light a moon to lean your forehead against -your dreams still ache and their fever. This puddle needs planks, bulkheads -I kneel and the ripples far off, deserted -under your pillow you will listen for a darkness leaning against the sky a dampness :your heart covered with stars, drifting away. [548]
■ How could something so soft do any harm -naked, its waves once stones falling from some mountainside sweetened by streams :a sea made beautiful more voluptuous than arm in arm when huge sails would shape a song sent back to shore as evenings a few hours from the stars floating off though an empty bottle could mean the difference, would fill your hand and no one begging for help -you would hear this sea before its first tide :a pulse a light being born, already weeping -how can it be, this bloodstained sand caressed the way waves are still scented, made graceful to welcome the lost, the splash and because it is the thing to do you cup your hands for tears give back to the sea more stones adrift, one colder than the other. [549]
Simon Perchik was born in 1923 in Paterson, New Jersey. He is a graduate of New York University where he received both his B.A. in English and his law degree. Perchik was a pilot during World War II and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other military decorations. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1951 and worked primarily in a private law practice except for five years when he was Assistant District Attorney for Suffolk County, New York. Perchik's poetry has appeared in more than fifty journals and magazines and-by one count-he has published twenty chapbooks and collections of poetry. A comprehensive collection of his poetry, Hands Collected 1949-1999, was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2000. Since the appearance of the Pavement Saw Press collection, Perchik has published The Autochthon Poems (Split/Shift, 2001), and he has still another collection, Family of Man, (Pavement Saw Press, 2004). Perchik resides in East Hampton, New York. These untitled poems were selected from Perchik's These Hands Filled with Numbness (Dusty Dog Press, 1996). |
