Drawing Breath
bees ink on paper Tia Ballantine 1976
some thoughts on Drawing Breath, written before the towers fell
(PUBLISHED POEMS FOLLOW )
In the days before I began to write the poems that would become Drawing Breath, I had to find a way to depart from myself. I would leave my four-wall cave where I worked throughout most of the day and night, abandon my writing temporarily, and drive up to Kapalama Heights to look at paintings, keeping my thoughts fixed on motion. Catching sight of the sea, I imagined planting gardens again, columbines and salmon-pink poppies, and as wind ripped down Nu’uanu valley, I swallowed ancient syllables, hearing hreosan, 'rush,' mixing with hreðe, 'heart,' in the back of my throat. Hawanwana. Whisper.
This was a place alive with past energies embedded in stone. When I turned my head and looked up the valley towards Nu'uanu Pali, I was always acutely aware that the smooth rounded tops of the monkeypod trees covered the killing fields of the battle that marked Kamehameha's 1795 victory, establishing him as the ruler of all the islands-excepting Kaua`i and Ni`ihau. Occasionally, with sun low on the horizon and mist spiraling up from the valley, the damp air between me and opposite ridge of the valley turned to fire, glowing red, and I knew I was looking through the ua koko, the blood-red rain, at death, at history --- and at birth.
One late afternoon, I labored up the hill, past tangled brush to the ruined building where my husband (now my ex) painted everyday, carefully pinning oversized canvases to the crumbling concrete walls. I sat on a broken-down Victorian couch with threadbare velvet upholstery propped on the porch and stared out past Punchbowl to deep ocean beyond, thinking of past battles and dreaming of eating stones, of writing without words. I needed to forget academic culture wars and to try to forget localized horror stories that some felt compelled to tell me on a daily basis --- stories about abandonment and loneliness, brutality and cruelty, pain and absence. Instead of thinking about knife fights, gang wars, domestic abuse, drug overdoses (or poetry), I listened to the silence between horn honks and traffic jams, bird and lawn mowers. I listened to the blue expanse that opened when palm fronds stop scratching against each other. I listened to the arc that appeared when wide-winged white-tailed birds stopped singing, to the geometry that shrank and grew when the ambulance down below flipped its siren off, when the truck skidding on the sudden unexpected curve returned to the straightaway, when the chainsaw ceased, when the dog fell back to sleep. I wanted to hear silence, but I couldn't. I could only feel its teeth. I sensed the heavens chewing, but I was uncertain if they were ready to swallow or to spit.
I sat there until dark, until the small lights of returning fishing boats flickered on the sea, and then, I went inside, found a candle, stuck it burning on a rusted jar lid, and went back to my slumping couch. I wrote on the back of my electric bill :
We cannot proceed directly to Cezanne.
This was my beginning for the book that eventually became Drawing Breath, but I remember what Pasternakonce said about first pages:No genuine book has a first page. Like the rustling of a forest, it is begotten God knows where, and it grows and rolls, awaking the arcane wilds of the forest, till suddenly, in the darkest, most stunned and panicked moment, it rolls to its end and it begins to speak with all tree-tops at once.
Always the trees.
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CORRESPONDENCE
Epic ambition does not entertain her.
When the man moves to Tibet, she discovers
flexibility condemns her to guessing.
Then, erased from any talk of plum blossoms,
she no longer writes behold or appareled—
and barring flames
or new forms:
inquiry is ruled out.
She locks the door, organizes
canned food by color,
leaves silverware unwashed:
the pressure of detail.
He writes: Your letters are valuable to me . . . I can describe
to you again the obstinacy.
She reads the letter as if she were Emile Bernard,
bare feet on yellow oilcloth, a pencil
in her teeth. If she answers, she will write:
Mallarmé, intuition, and include absolute beauty
as testament for anachronism.
She crosses his name from hers--
Prints on the back of an Italian postcard:
We cannot proceed directly to Cezanne.
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PUBLISHED POEMS FROM Drawing Breath.
Published: Poet's Canvas 23 (Fall 2003)
VOICES CONFUSE THE INNOCENT HEART
In a synthetic land she explains away the man
waist-deep in ambition, then settles for odd
people and sleight of hand and ordinary
men unrestrained: touch has changed.
(re-------)
With eyes half open, hands
atop a stone, resting
beside his lute
he asks:
Was that why you went away?
(re-------)
It doesn’t help to wait for prayer:
or words to break breath, to move
skin from fingertips to myth
(re-------)
undo buttons, unclasp buckles
slip straps from wrists
Rewrite:
a popular round of red
as slaughter press
unamazed
God-kin exclamation point
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CHRONOLOGY
(It’s) cerulean blue (it’s not): Saucers balanced on a chair:
ten high, brushes lying
amber flat on glass:
a four inch crack--
a slight repair,
a total loss:
(She’s not) a separate species (she is): a suspicious gesture,
a folded brushmark
a mix to red,
a split with black--
(It’s) precedent (it’s not): his anger dying in proportion
to his affection.
(When war breaks out:
possession: rest and pitch:
declaration: where how
why who what : leaves
no confession)
(She’s not) silence: sign (she is): No ideological
harmony, no history: no
drift no melt no earth:
no mist
no wanton trust--
no sensible things--
no confidence, no green
HE: with hands across his eyes
SHE: in sleeves of terror, a silken avalanche
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Published: Winter Gifts. Helena Nelson, ed. Fife, Scotland: Happenstance Press, 2005.
MYTHOLOGY OF RAINBOWS
Fireflies die in winter, termites
hibernate. Small birds go away.
Wind crystal stains her jacket blue,
warning her to stand inches back
from hail stones, to wait--
for one man to twist a key:
for thunder borne on glass:
for rooms to fold her:
for far ice to roll her. She ignores
the stranger marking alley space, draped
in yellow canvas and graffiti:
purple rust on green. She examines
blind stripped windows blocked
by trash and soot, washed
from glass to gutters, with no
flower stems, no leaves, no
memory
without vacation, myth:
or history. Her hand
stays still against
his chest, drowning.
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Published: Pirene's Fountain October 2009 http://www.pirenesfountain.com
CIRCUIT
He walks in salt marsh, stepping
one stone two stone, hearing
voice as evidence, heron
on hush sands—beggar deaf
She remembers such a spring--
bare nights in need of silk
on every sidewalk—broken
glass on every tree limb, moths:
history her cradle
logic his light
american gothic oil/gouache on paper Tia Ballantine 1987
