from Ravished1
I. Like a sentence stenciled in the sky
I see them dancing in the empty study hall
to an old radio show windows
wide open street sounds streaming in
blurred like a wet postcard on the asphalt
But what do I know?
Too much sense mars the writing
hollow space in my head
never heard a thing about her childhood
worth noting not even from Tatiana
It must be summer I’m only tracing
the faintest of lines a tennis court
at the end of August
stretches the minutes
before the grand dance is announced
you’ll have to picture Town
Beach almond cake casino
and a marriage proposal
maybe not exactly in that order
the right to error is a given here
Lola’s parents consent
as per the old scroll
where sex and gender
wear the same robe
Michael Richardson’s name chiseled
in even strokes only child like a fossil track
we recognize at once
It’s not the famous ball that causes
the collapse Tatiana says with that pensive
moue she takes crossing her legs as if
we had all the time in the world
if you want to know she’s always
been like that even in school
never a tear Pietà face the heart
will come later surely
Yes it seems like a garden
not yet planted that region
of feeling one reserves for another season
When the rumors start about her engagement
Tatiana wonders who on earth could clasp
Lola V. Stein in his arms when all say
she’s like water in one’s cupped palms
sent rolling down the stairs
I’m convinced of nothing
in the half-light of doubt
a waiting room a puddle
we circle around, wobble
then come to a stop as if
on the brink of a ravine
That’s how we’ll invent the railing
that led to an awful night
The way I tell Lol’s story, unreliable narrator
that I am, though my name seems to hold
the old gate standing in for the facts
won’t be once upon a time
first nineteen years
running through the square
sprocket holes that
the projector teeth grab onto
I’ll look for her just where I should
when she seems to move
as if in my direction
at the precise moment
two women step inside
the municipal casino
What to retain here save the scary
beauty Tatiana will have observed:
mouth also height
aloft in the now emptying dance floor
Transfixed Lol watches there’s something
of a dead bird inside that black sheath
or maybe a slap she wears like a plunging neck-
line, a cormorant bordered by pale feathers
My story might begin here in that double layer
of tulle the fiancé suddenly much older
moves toward as if following a script
for an alternate ending
“I must invite her to dance.”
The impulse so transparent so intense
they simply shiver at the peril
Already Lol loses her girlhood
smile such agony
eyebrows knit ever so slightly
Anne-Marie Stretter finds herself
in his arms as evidence passes
from gaze to that naked space
on her shoulder hand
caught in the acquiescent nod
of the first dance
It’s behind the bar
its tall greenery
she understands the odd
code that excludes her
The ballroom’s almost empty
and the couple strangely deaf
doesn’t notice the music has stopped
that someone hurls insults
It’s Lol’s mother turning up
all trembly tangle of arms
looking for the exit door
in the charlatan light
of this dawn grown murky
carapace: please it’s not that late
she yells to Michael Richardson
eyes on the ground they pass
before her, one after the other
like a sentence stenciled in the sky
1. Source text: Marguerite Duras. Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1964.