nearly envious of the suburban
cars’ neatly willful trajectories,
at one as I am with that
freighter anchored in the narrows —
under a zebra-sky,
so there was a golden age of drag?
the newspaper at least claims so
as Cohen sings I fought with
temptation but had no desire
to win —
                   what’s that glass of
blood, just another metaphor
for an ultimate try to buy
my way out of a poem-less
present — but, yea, against
again: you can’t go home
again, Parsifal, you remain
stuck in my 1976 late August
mind, stuck in my car breaking
down between Aix & Marseilles —
oh, nothing glorious,
neither -hole nor -clouds —
let the rain stop, walk
out of your day,
mind.

Pierre Joris most recently published Arabia (not so) Deserta (Essays, Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2019);  Conversations in the Pyrenees with Adonis (CMP 2018), and The Book of U (poems, with Nicole Peyrafitte, Editions Simoncini). Microliths: Posthumous Prose of Paul Celan is forthcoming  from Contra Mundum Press & The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan from FSG.