Blue Hour
for Sean Christophe （first two sections）
by Carolyn Forché
The moon slips from its cerement, and my son, already disappearing into
a man, moves toward his bed for the night, wrapped in a towel of
lake scent.
A viola, night-voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes.
A woman alone rows across the lake. Her life is intact, but what she
thought could never be taken has been taken. An iron bridge railing
one moment its shadow the next.
It is n’y voir que du bleu, it is blind to something. Nevertheless.
Even the most broken life can be restored to its moments.
___________
My son rows toward me against the wind. For thirty-six years, he rows.
In 1886, he is born in Paris.
Bice the clouds, watchet, indigo, woad.
We lived overlooking the cemetery. It was the summer of the Paris
bombings. I walked him among the graves for what seemed hours but
were clouds drifting across marble.
Believing it possible to have back the field in its flowering, my friend has
brought me here, has given ma an open window, the preludes, an
echo of my son’s laughter on the rumpled lake.
Go wherever you can but keep returning to the present.
The human soul weighs twenty-six grams. A cathedral can become
A dovecote.
Zur Blindheit über
redete Augen.
Ihre - "ein
Rätsel ist Rein-
entsprungenes", ihre
Erinnerung an
schwimmende Hölderlintürme, möven-
umschwirrt.
Besuche ertrunkener Schreiner bei
diesen
tauchenden Worten:
Käme ,
käme ein Mensch,
käme ein Mensch zur Welt, mit
dem Lichtbart der
Patriarchen: er dürfte,
spräch er von dieser
Zeit, er
dürfte
nur lallen und lallen,
immer-, immer-
zuzu.