PASTORAL OF THINGS
Or one
one writes in the cold
believes he moves away from the abstract, only
to enter through the backdoor
The fear of representation, going back
to representation, that is,
to animosity
•
A mobilization of arguments
A supposed return
to the void prior to the project,
da capo, for there is no inside
that remains attentive to the position of its object
Only outside of nature,
not inside it, can there be time
Fire is
the company one keeps
•
The unit retained
in some sense of duration,
reduced to a zone unknown to us
The mysterious “quality” of action
All natural phenomena including
the heavens
•
The city, the poem, and in both
the nature of human occupation
•
What awaits is love
as language awaits
the terms of its own insertion in the world
•
Upon asking
they’d say the words
grew bitter. Associated words grow
sour as well,
necessarily
Better to write the “poem” in letters
with “personal communications”
•
You hear atmospheric noises,
“man-made” noises
Should they exist, not even dust would shake
the idea of childhood
•
Alone or
in groups the mind
in a landscape
In the corner of the painting
in that right angle
the moon
closes the circle,
the moon eats all her seasons
Someone peers
into the photograph
and because of this
something dark is added
—
Born in Mexico in 1978, Hugo García Manríquez is a poet and translator. His most recent full-length collections are Anti-Humboldt: A Reading of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Litmus Press, 2015) and Commonplace (Cardboard House Press, 2022). He has translated into Spanish William Carlos Williams’ Paterson (2009), George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous (2019), a collection of essays and poems by Sean Bonney, El lenguaje de las barricadas (2021), and an anthology of Jack Spicer’s work, After Lorca y otros poemas (2022), among others. He lives in Oakland, California.
Cameron Lovejoy is a poet, translator, and book artist who operates the micropress Tilted House. His work can be found here and elsewhere. He lives in New Orleans.