Blueaille
Brilliant, how you lure cotingas into the shabby
seaside lodgings of your untraveled memory:
in their cages, fashion operettas of the mundane.
libretti bubble pipes cat-bones compasses
Of the life devoted to your invalid brother,
make a world of ten thousand exquisite things.
Be the Ulysses of the tethered ankle.
ticket stubs indigo silk paper birds telescope-lenses
Let others found their dynasties, paint portraits
in lapis: yours will be the seeds
falling on the bluest peninsulas.
French menus oaken spheres mouse fuzz gyroscopes
Let your grimy little street’s smoggy days
turn cerulean, and your moonless nights’
wild auroras burn green and purple.
lithographed children mirrors butterflies piston rings
Your room will be the artfullest nook on the Seine,
your companions the physicists and ballerinas
of Europe, your conversations the most daring.
balsa propellers goblets seashells DC circuits
We can almost hear the music box’s tiny marimba,
the pop and hiss of vinyl enshrining a tenor
in a cobalt enamel gramophone.
glass actresses Codd marbles feathers clock-springs
When the future crowds around
your impeccably dilapidated steamer trunk,
blue light will emanate as it yawns open.
Blueaille, you called it.
© 2011 Katherine Williams
The author gratefully acknowledges publication of “Blueaille” in
City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poems
Ryan van Cleave, Ed., University of Iowa Press (2012)
