From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine V

The carpet is not a story. It is a place,

garden of crisscrossed pathways, labyrinth,

fountain, pool, and stream.

As though the fabric had ripped at the vanishing point

at the top of the street

of ashen façades and slate-sloped roofs, you stepped

through the gap, out of your own world.

I had already lost my world.

We met in a torn design

which we tore further, pulling the tall warp,

thread wrapped tightly around our fingers until it bit the flesh

and the rue de Lille unravelled.

I know about design: it’s my job,

arranging other people’s letters in star charts

that phosphoresce in the dark between the closed covers of books.

You knew about design from the holes

blown through your country.

We spoke in a language of no country on earth.

You moved slowly, in shadow, teaching the shadows

to echo my name. You ripped my shirt at the neck.

Was it The Beloved I held, holding you?

Down the middle of the carpet the river

weaves a thousand gray glimmers into the deeper green.

The river knows about mourning; that’s its job.

How many years has it practiced? With such fleet fingers. A man

woke me at dawn this morning, sobbing and cursing in the street,

reeling from sidewalk to gutter and back again.

On my long gray street, the rue de Lille, where I still live.