L’Air Du Temps

By JS Venit

The Wolf and the Sufi
What if I told you a story
about the past for instance
that soap is the dirt we buy
that it lacks clarity and leaves
the tongue standing alone
that it scares us

The leaves are not for
the actual or the potential
world or the fields in the
actual or potential world

But they rattle and still
sell a lot of tickets

Ive been living with
the willow of American
speech in a hollow where
the seasons seem old
the stars of September
seem worn and in that
moment we always imagine
the worst

Later we imagine the past
when its light enough to read
by and we can get out of these
second-hand clothes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493165155

JS Venit

JS Venit was born in New York and emigrated to Belgium in 1980 where he lives and works. His poems have been published in the Partisan review, the American Poetry review, Literary Imagination and the Little Magazine. This is Mr. Venits eleventh collection of poems.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by JS Venit.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014900744

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4931-6514-8

             Softcover       978-1-4931-6513-1

           eBook            978-1-4931-6515-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 01/28/2014

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CONTENTS

I

The Wolf And The Sufi

Skywriting In The Night At Leipzig

Adam Hemlock

Uncle Vanya

Imaginary Gardens

Levin’s Breakfast

Les Deux Alice

The Parole Evidence Rule

L’air Du Temps

Snippets From Proust

Second Restaurants Opening Beside The Danube

Dirge

Afternoon In The Country

Jacob’s Ladder

The Clouds Will Save Us

The Great Motorized Awakening

The Low Countries

Zero Sum Gardens

The Afterlife

Déjà Vu

Le Chateau Des Morts

The Thief Of Music

Lines

The Way It Was

Caesura

Washington Crossing The Delaware With Tennyson At Night

The Sorrows Of Goethe

Castles In The Sky

About The Breeze

After Leopardi

Endangered Species

II

Greetings

As Promised

Among Tablets

Dead Souls

The Death Of Li Bao

Poem About Time

Sortes Vergilianae

Souvenirs

Those Who Travel

Wanling’s Fifth Letter

Inside Sleep

Diary Of A Thief

Pagoda Lake

The Way

Seventeen Steps To A Greater Whatever

Double Hannahs

L’uffizi

Oveta Culp Hobby

Es War Einmal

Synesthesia

Pin

Lines Again For Agnes Martin

Songs Of The Desert

Arrividerci Boston

Abschied

III

If The Snow Fell All At Once

Arietta

Earlier Versions Of Ourselves

Visitations Of The Muse

The Cost Of Living

Narrative Events

Hölderlin

Solstice

Eclectic Moments

Moorings

Voidable Transactions

Latest Changes

News From The Rialto

Zukunfts Musik

Arable Fountains

White Ecological Artists’ Paper

L/S/M/F/T

Epithet

Help Is On The Way

Survival Of The Fittest

In Scattered Fields

War And Peace

Patronymics

Sulla Mare

Io Wind

What Hannah Said

Splendid Pockets

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Adumbrations Of The Moon

Family Trees

Mementos

Local Motifs

Doors To The River

Two Odes

Hinweise

Collages

To Mallarmé

Cities

Flavors

For Hannah

L’ecole Des Princesses

Portrait Of A Young Girl

Stolen Letters

Erasures

Moleskin Notebooks

To A Threne

Skywriting

The Retired Bride

Glazes

Die Wende

The Perils Of Reading Kafka

The Man Of Precedent

Ghosts

Fables

The Flill On The Moss

Forgotten Titles

Lines Written In Secret

Giving Away The Bride

The Museum Of Sleep

Some Closing Words

For Momo et Hannah – Vous êtes ma vie

I

THE WOLF AND THE SUFI

What if I told you a story

about the past for instance

that soap is the dirt we buy

that it lacks clarity and leaves

the tongue standing alone

that it scares us

The leaves are not for

the actual or the potential

world or the fields in the

actual or potential world

But they rattle and still

sell a lot of tickets

I’ve been living with

the willow of American

speech in a hollow where

the seasons seem old

the stars of September

seem worn and in that

moment we always imagine

the worst

Later we imagine the past

when it’s light enough to read

by and we can get out of these

second-hand clothes

SKYWRITING IN THE NIGHT AT LEIPZIG

There is more room here for

complexity young trees like

friendly words in German and

the conviction with which they

will join the sky in its murky

business while we watch these

stars approaching us again.

You will need their restful edges

consuming the air growing more

important than the gift or what

it stands for while the hours call

out and are stretched into the

flattening distance telling us all

they know.

We can agree later about the

expansion of the sky the way it

fits into the icy pages as you try

to describe them. It’s as if you

had announced there were more

lights ahead and so there were

but not in the normal sense.

One star went out beside

its brother and then the shower

of the doomed remainder came

shooting down.