Chéri
And well if you contract an insoluble solution
Reverberating chords come nagging
And all again is well.
In the dialect of proposition there lies another word,
In the tumult of tradition another voice,
Another sound misheard and apprehended
Like a screeching fiddle through a misshapen bag of
Chamomile tea.
Well and we pick apart the liquor,
Purple wrappers strewn across the old apartment;
In another room the needle on the phonograph sings
Another E. The chaos is written through sublation,
Which he has smoked on another terrace,
In another time, where time erased is not unbalanced,
All unwell.
With a separate briefcase he announces a departure,
Through the cracking of the silhouettes,
Cackling sovereignty, and another pin on his lapel.
We have counted up the hours that he cannot spend
Without a slumber, without reminder of another outlet
(That it could be different); in a pinch of spectralist viola
You set the scene in two or three summations;
Carry on the compositions. Telling you or me
(Through drizzles shielded over by a mackintosh pullover)
That it cannot rain another decade,
That is, another decade through the golden years of mirth.
Well in an antiquated peacoat we have strutted down an ersatz
Oxford street, reminding you and me of all the convolutions
That a modern Helen has to offer. A symphony has been reduced
To just a string quartet and rogue soprano.
The train to Prague sets off at dusk and you remember the Vltava.
He had never crossed the river, and I know how much you’d like to see
Another ship carry off its passengers to the Semite and his hound.
A cup of tea is all that it has taken to rend the notes asunder.
The printer beckons to another time within the future,
And he cannot know how well I have been planted in the past.
His sophomoric giggle on a bicycle in Heldenplatz.
You take my hand, awaiting; the two spoons of yoghurt
Would have been too milky for your taste.
He sits before a Raphael, bequeathing sighs of you and me
Sipping our mimosas and mint teas.
In the Albertina subway graphics dull out a century’s collection,
And the marble horseman bites his lip.
In a farther bedroom you have outlined my demise;
Over beds of tortellini by the old cathedral he has commented
On the use of rocketships out in the sky.
The universe is an oblong smear of milk and you have claimed it
Bigger. As we traipse through cabarets and shopping malls in trousers
That are much too short, you see another possibility,
A horizon that is much too rouge in shape and distance.
In a plane the children are still screaming.
I have screamed another bluff in tandem with all of his proceedings.
He carries home another loaf of cash to eat, and we sit through a
Ponderous rendition of Pierrot Lunaire.
You have seen it always. News rings out from Boston,
And it is all the same.
We have known more days together than comprise a meagre
Sixteen months. He smokes another waft of dollar bills.
In a new concerto there is all to find that has been present in tonality.
London Bridge has never quite existed; so we cross the Tower,
To our dusky reverential future. I wonder if I shall ever say a word
Of you and me and all of our adventures that have landed us
Through old attacks. The three-headed beast must now await our stay.
Well how can we remain if earth is always movement, and forgetting,
Change, and then tomorrow. The umbrella would be better,
But I cannot convince you of the happenstance that would shut out all the rain.
We say that rain shall always come another day, but what if this—
This is the sunshine that cannot penetrate the winds.
His eyes were always waiting for a sibilant conclusion,
Looking towards the end. And you have rested but a child,
Twenty years without it all, and smiling to a mirror.
We have seen a world through a shard of glass—and he
Must be an intrusion. He downs another shot of vodka,
Counts to four in five numeric units,
Wipes his forehead on a puce Canali tie.
The marimba is still singing upon our return.
In a room in Boston rings the tune of the Arabian queen.
In Russia the procession has been always different.
Tonight we gaze at corneas glazed over with the beams of seas,
And the waves drift off so peacefully.
In a novel she has always found her way.
He has wrested all the words and abstract sieges from her grasp;
I have arrested all the moments where it was just talk of you and me.
One day I met you with a banker’s parapluie.
Where has it gone, and why has it all vanished?
I do not dare presume to ask such questions,
Yet he has always harboured the audacity to speak.
Sleep well, darling. He has never called me darling,
But to you I shall always be chérie.
Liza Libes is a poet and a novelist studying English Literature at Columbia University. A native of Chicago, she loves everything that New York City has to offer, especially its bookstores and quirky coffeeshops. In her spare time you will find her reading T.S. Eliot or John Keats for inspiration.
More of her work:
Three Poems, And So Yeah
Curvamen, Gone Lawn
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