Poems from Rivard Street
by Benjamin Oldham
This autumn,
an armistice.
We will sign it together
in a city of great stone,
remember?
Lay down arms, we said,
let us not do this
any longer.
But oh, how cold
is that great stone, and austere.
If our arms were any longer
we would not need
to be so close to be intimate;
we would not need
to lay down
to come to armistice.
We would not need
to make sure it holds,
and holds
within our arms.
There must be flames,
you know,
tall overreaching flames
to get cool embers
in the morning.
In the night
we show each other
who we could be
if we lose
who we might have been.
Flames wash away
the facade.
In the morning
your face stings of smoke;
wash it away,
begin again.
In everything
there are cool embers
that remain.
The coals remember,
you know,
the way fire evolves
to lose itself.
Sometimes you have to
revisit a memory.
You have to replace yourself
in the scene,
and retrace your steps
in the streets
to where we stood
to watch the first pink sunset
of the summer,
the city’s eyes brought up
from stone to sky
through every branch
and break in brickwork
in the rows of buildings.
The whole city’s eyes—
that’s how I know
that no one looked at me
but you,
and no one looked at us
but each other,
under cover of a blazing sky.
Only
the city wasn’t burning then.
Sometimes you have to
revisit a memory
to be sure;
sometimes,
the memory revisits you.
If I write about you
in a poem,
does that make you immortal?
I would ask you first
if you’re okay with that,
but a poem
has to be anonymous,
and I just had to write it
on a mysterious tear
that got into me,
as most poems are made.
Sorry,
if you hoped for a finite life;
I guess you’ll have to wander
through the lonely nights
and part the city streets
like I did,
and search for yourself
in each of the small worlds
I penned you in
to live forever—
because that was the only way I knew,
foolish or not,
to make you feel immortal.
Make a choice:
What comes first?
We could answer each other,
or we could
become question together.
We could both say
what the chest has chosen
or demanded
and both listen
and both know the outcome;
they say it becomes clear,
it all works out
because the world wills it.
But we make the choice
ourselves,
world notwithstanding—
unless the world is standing still,
on quiet beaches
holding tides
and waiting for us
to become question.
We have been talking
for a long time
by the water tonight,
and now the limits set in:
I test how it feels
to close my eyes,
and a pause slips by
like a boat in the canal,
the whole silent length of it.
The world sighs,
attentive as it has listened,
and rain washes the evening
under cover of night.
But there are limits:
the rain ends,
we cannot stay forever.
We have to sleep,
and we long,
the whole silent length of it.
It is my contradiction
to have lived in a place
so full of legend,
so full of the vigor of history
and the fervor of solitude
and to have lived
only a half life
in this place.
For all my life
I will be running after
the rest of it,
searching in the lakes
and rivers full,
full deep and wide
and forests dense and old
and cities full of stars.
And people,
people full
of a quiet surging
that in one moment
roars through the dam,
full of contradiction.
And to remember
that it doesn’t matter
if it makes sense
to anyone but us,
I am running after you,
trying to meet your half life
somewhere we can become
full legend.
It is the kind of night
that makes poor conditions
for sleep,
and a world is coming through
the curtains of the room
in lightly billowing dimensions
by the open window.
In the restless hours
I try to understand it,
but all I know for certain
are the surfaces illuminated
by the moon
or cast in darkness
by the forms between us.
I am only shown
the very light and dark—
and that is comfortable,
that I can understand.
After all,
what do I know of myself
but the very light and dark?
What can I show you
but the things I am certain of?
I wish I could tell you
this is why I need you,
I need you next to me
to trace the landscape
of this world
into contours I can understand.
And the dark may shift
and sway in the wind
like branches
and relinquish light.