j

i:\iptiki) si'\ci.>

The Abelard Poets
EMPTIED SPACES

A     1         ■>

The Abelard Poets
EMPTIED SPACES
DAVID JAFFIN
with an etching especially created for this volume by Jacques Lipchitz
Abelard-Schuman London

© Copyright 1972 by David Jaffîn
LCCC No: 72-7225
ISBN: 0 200 71874 6
Printed in Great Britain by W & J Mackay Limited, Chatham
Abelard-Schuman Limited 158 Buckingham Palace Road London swl
and 24 Market Square Aylesbury Bucks

Contents

m
Emptied Spaces 9
Night-time study 9
Old man in the park 10
Frostscene 11
Idealized 12
After a portrait of Lenbach
(1890s) 12
Road building 13
Not by choice 14
Remembered 15
The pool 15
n.y.c. 16
To the historical 17
Descent 17
To the death of Chiewitz 18
Mirrored 18
Empty chairs 19
For the fisherman at Voula 19
The room 20
Firing squad 20
Cycle 21
Hunters 22
Retreat 23

pi]
Door partly opened 24
On the 7th 24
A bouquet of flowers 25
Waiting 25
A man at his desk 26
Perspectives 26
A glass bowl 27
Sofa 27
Still 28
Statue in the park 29
On the hanger 29
Old Roman road 30
Exactly as it was 31
A bowl of fruit 32
Autumn room 32

Again for Rosemarie, and for my sons, Raphael and Andreas

These poems have appeared in the following periodicals:
The Poetry Review; The Anglo Welsh Review; Workshop;
Tribune; Enigma; Akros; Oasis; Second Aeon; Capella (Ire-
land); Contrasts; Samphire; Forum (University of Houston,
USA); Elizabeth (USA); The Smith (USA); The Gallery
Series Poets (USA); The Galley Sail Review (USA); The
Little Review (USA); Descant (USA); The Wisconsin
Review (USA); The Green River Review (USA); DeKalb
Literary Arts Review (USA); Poetry Venture (USA);
Bitterroot (USA); The Indian P.E.N.; Ophir (South Africa);
Other Voices (Canada); Envoi; Platform; Headland; Scrip;
The Informer; Orbis; The Florida Quarterly (USA); The
Free Lance (USA); Ghostdance (USA); All in; Poetry and
Audience; Ore; Northeast (USA); Zahir (USA); Viewpoints;
Caryatid (USA); Gong; Open Places (USA); Gaga.

[I]	EMPTIED SPACES
The candle's spent,
It was flesh
He meant to say,
But the words burned
Still, left him a
Room of emptied
spaces.
NIGHT-TIME STUDY
for my son, Raphael
The stars went out,
Each of a single in-
stance, prepared
That night to be
Indefinably still: the
Feel of touch, the
Sense of the real
Fingers on cloth 5 stars
went out,
Each of a single in-
stance.

10

OLD MAN IN THE PARK
An old man sat where he was,
wooden-framed
In the fountained park,
His thought the same
As the things about him:
The barely coloured green
of grass
Brought to mind, reminded,
The emptied pond,
Swans that gathered their wings
there once,
The sun florescent gold, bold
emblazoned sun.
The old man sat where he was,
wooden-framed
In the fountained park.

FROSTSCENE
In this stillness
One expects the eye to move.
So much here is hard and cold,
Wrought/untold between
us.
If we could touch
That this silver-silence could thaw,
Straight out to the tips of our
Fingers, that this branch
Could bear its spring of sap,
Unexpected, and liquid in
intent.
If we could speak
That our words could break
As flower from stone declared,
That quickened sense
Impulsed in light . . .
But in this stillness
One expects the eye to move.
So much here is hard and cold,
Wrought/untold between
us.

11

12

IDEALIZED
Transfig-
urations of thought,
idealized
That probable af-
ternoon
Lighted with sound:
Your feet my plea-
sure
Performed in tact and
measure —
You smiled,
Peripheral to the
sense.
AFTER A PORTRAIT OF LENBACH
(1890s)
You stood
And the world stood still
where you were.
And your dress encompassed
that space
well-knowing each and
every care
It had traced right down
to that
Same selected moment
Where you stood in a world that wasn't
anymore
Looking out, looking out
perpetually silent.

ROAD BUILDING
They cut a road out of that
landscape,
Planned and contrived to con-
nect two places
On the map which they had
never seen.
They came with their tools,
With their rough-handed workers,
With their skills, with their plans
And surveyors and at just the
Right time of year.
They chose the curves and angles,
They exposed that soft soil
to their wants,
They laid flat that land,
Poured burning tar on a readied
surface
And let it dry down deep.
And they curved those sides away
Proportioned to the proper
slopes
And then they took their tools
And their rough-handed workers
And their skills and their plans
And surveyors, packed up and
went home.

13

14

NOT BY CHOICE
They found themselves at the same place
Not by choice but by chance
Each had decided to come for
Some other reason of his own and
That place wasn't final
Either as a destination but
More like a point of debarcation as
Rivers that run together to a
Common source and then feed out in-
to the same sea
They came, each separately,
Each with his own thoughts in hand,
Underway. It was like changing
Trains at a common platform
Waiting at the same time
For the same thing
And yet only for themselves -
But that train didn't come,
The rivers failed to
Run together and they found
Themselves there at that same
Place, not by choice but
By chance each had decided to
Come for some other reason
of his own.

REMEMBERED
Time is falling,
Let it step into the past
briefly
And leave no mark
As words scarcely brought to
mind —
I think of you so,
Of the lightness of fallen
snow
That leaves no mark
Except when winds (trans-
parent) wake.
THE POOL
Look down into that
watered place,
The light's gone out of
your transient face,
Leaves shadows there
instead 5  •
That pool's bare,
Cracked at the edge,
Thoughts you gathered there
Will blow and break
And end for winter's
sake 5
Look down there
At what you've found out
of yourself.

15

16

n.y.c.
Perhaps these stones have spoken
(and their voice conceals
the want of light),
Or glimmering shadows per-
petuate here
A certain sense of desire
(in the twilight of
laughter when birds ex-
hibit their skills) —
Imagined wings of flight
Awaken not that real sense for
light;
Perhaps these stones have spoken
(i placed my fingers to
feel the want of
flesh)
And their words passed in
me
The coolness of another
afternoon.

TO THE HISTORICAL
Imperfectly known,
Abandoned in time to touch
and stone
This sanctity of fact fin-
alized, idealized
The tentative act itself
Imperfectly declared
As the fictions of waste:
Flesh, blood and bone,
And the fictions of time:
Touch and stone.
DESCENT
Those steps led
down,
Casements (enclo-
sures)
Of equalled sound
Consecutively apparent
We came to the
river
(river of dreams),
Though your hand ceased
to touch
(river of lights).

17

18

TO THE DEATH OF CHIEWITZ
Death has a separate room,
A single door that leads
in
And light at the
window's edge
A glass cleaned dry,
Sheets propped high and the
smell of flowers;
It has it all
That room it calls its
own
And the flesh that wears
away there, un-
observed.
MIRRORED
I looked to your face,
It reflected mine;
You smiled, I was cold;
Your voice tremoured -
No, it was the leaves;
And when I pressed your hand,
The pulse stilled.

EMPTY CHAIRS
They stood in their own
separate place
Gathering sounds they wound a-
round themselves as
Carefully as cloth's matter
of taste
Concentric/preconceived
eyes
That peered from under
cover out
Preconvicted to stone
They stood in their own
separate silence
Chilled by the fires,
Rubbing their hands
And renewing the cold of their
stiff and back-boned
chairs.
FOR THE FISHERMAN AT VOULA
Irreconcilable stood the
night,
It's armour of stars —
Light fires of the vaul-
ted wind,
Begin, but beware
You have raised a fish
from my heart,
That cold moon watching
through its mountain
of glass.

19

20

THE ROOM
The room prepared,
His steps neared against mar-
ble stone,
Left a cold presence
That wasn't his,
But came with him, in-
cidentally 5
The door was high,
Beyond reach as he passed
by
A shadow became $
He stood alone,
Columns of marble stone
Marked off to the
place where he stood.
FIRING SQUAD
They stood them up as
Tabled chairs turned
Over to be shot
at
Inside/out suspended to
The vacant airs of pro-
bability framed with-
out care of more or
less than hap-
pened there
Tabled chairs turned
Over to be
shot
at.

CYCLE
They stood him in a room
And told him to stay there.
At first his hands were warm,
But he could feel their heat de-
cline.
He stood as high as he could
That room was still
Four cornered, walled and
made of wood.
He sat at the centre of
Things that he thought.
And then he began to walk,
side to side,
Increasing the step be-
tween.
He stood straight again as
A tree stripped of its sound in
the autumn rain.
And he began to dream,
Crouched and crumbled in
shadow.
And they came at last to
carry him off.

21

22

HUNTERS
Through the wood,
Through the porous-chained
darkness
Break-combed pines of
shining stillness
Fabled high, foot naked-
marked
Scent, as scent they
come
shadows
cornered-turned
COMMAND
Calling that light forth
Through the wood
And at a step
And at that stance
fired
Finger- pressed steel
fired
To the veins
And at that still-moment
light.

RETREAT
You wouldn't have known where
They were going, backwards,
retreating
If it weren't for the sun in the
westwards sinking to
That stillness those flags
became
And their faces cleansed with
dust, protective now —
They didn't know either and
Weren't going to ask,
But simply came as they had
gone
One after the other,
Keeping time to what no one
knew,
A music perhaps, long since
forgotten
They were retreating
As they had from the first,
But from what they weren't
certain
Nor why, nor when, nor where
But simply came
As they had gone, one be-
hind the other,
Keeping time to what no-
body knew.

25

[II]	DOOR PARTLY OPENED
You let the light
in,
Angled-off,
Your hands closed as a
Shadow hanging there
You let the light
in
As far as your face
could allow.
ON THE 7th
It was on the 7th
that she died,
I remember dates exactly
since then,
She closed her readied
eyes
To the dead of that
winter
As shades
That should be drawn a-
round her yet,
Tentatively uncertain,
Broken at the sides
A circle we chose to
frame her there.
24

A BOUQUET OF FLOWERS
The fundamental truth,
perhaps, was,
That you held strange thoughts
in your hands,
But the flesh,
Your own, was warm, the
blood receded
Though these fingers would
urge their way
Prompted by an unfamiliar
sense
To the flower itself -
But they were many,
That light as if blown by
The suddenness of your
thoughts.
WAITING
I've sat by the fire now
These six days and
Waited — I'm not sure
For what 5 once
(somehow distinct) I
Thought I knew
As leaves blew in the
Wind and fires
Raised their flame;
But I've forgotten now
What it was these
Six days I've waited
for, just sitting and
Thinking about
nothing.

25

26

A MAN AT HIS DESK
It was night,
The dark drawn down and
He grew accustomed to
himself
In contrast: less dark,
less severe j
The cylinder lamp,
Its ample string,
Desk of grained/surfaced
wood
Became understood as
objects
As he to himself,
Of which he was pleased
and certain.
PERSPECTIVES
It was too finished to
be true,
That fibre set to a
single mark
You had been told to
believe -
Truth behaves less justly,
To the eye at least
Perspectives change
But for the time and to
the moment
It was too finished to
be true,
But too fine to be left
concealed.

A GLASS BOWL
Spoken of
glass, words re-
flect the
Ordered sound,
Placed on the ped-
estal,
Turned round,
That form appreciably
diminished —
touch is less than
sound.
SOFA
When you sat there,
Upon that silken cover at
the farthest edge,
Your dress drawn out as
Long as could be re-
membered,
Consciously concealing that
shyness of yours,
We came to think of it
as old
And softer than it
really was 5
But now that you've gone,
We've redressed the
surface
To provide another ap-
pearance
And we don't think of
it at all,
Though it sometimes
watches us.

27

28

STILL
Night has
Closed its curtains,
There's a still in the
House that won't stay-
In place. I wake.
I cross the
Sounds of my steps,
But the silence re-
turns.
I open the window
The moon can he seen,
Almost touched if
I think it clear enough
The dark becomes ap-
parent but the
Still is, is still
Even in this light
I close myself behind,
Recross the steps to
My room, open and
Close the door,
Consider myself in sheets
and sleep
But the night is wake
And the moon a hollow
disc
The windows keep looking
out
As silence thinks.

STATUE IN THE PARK
This visible sun compoun-
ded of silence
As thought placed and pro-
vided for
(obscured in stone)
He found himself prophe-
tically alone
(the man and the mir-
ror)
Suspended in time upon
its horse.
ON THE HANGER
You left your clothes, out
on the hanger
Prim and clean
Pretty and closed
I could have thought of
you without them
If you hadn't posed
quite that way
for me
At least in the morning light
Hanging yourself out
Without apparent
Cause so pretty and clean
And each of those but-
tons clipped to
my fingers.

29

30

OLD ROMAN ROAD
There were a few markings left.
They ran through a field
Planted with corn and
Into a wood at the other side,
Out. They didn't disturb.
They kept to their own
Ways as if they were useful
Still and a drawn carriage
Would soon come running
Through. The corn concealed their
Wants and the wood closed
Them in from observation,
But they remained
As an organ with discontinued
Use, directing traffic in
two directions.

EXACTLY AS IT WAS
There was no need to look
again, everything could
Be remembered now,
Exactly as it was, where
You stood,
A bit off to the right,
Uncertain of yourself,
The table set,
Reflected glass that wan-
ted warmth,
And we should ease our-
selves
(somewhat further per-
haps) into those
Cushions and smile, almost
out loud;
And when we talked
That room seemed further a-
way,
All that light and glass
That reflected nothing
of ourselves.

51

A BOWL OF FRUIT
It was placed
Not quite to the centre,
It was alive as colour
To be turned but
Partly upwards
Concealing shapes and the
shadows below.
It was a thing to be
touched,
Accentuated from as
Fingers creased to that
glass of surface.
It was placed
Not quite to the centre
To be perfect, to focus ones
Thoughts, but alive as
Colour extended slightly,
upwards.
AUTUMN ROOM
for my mother
We are used to the
Flowers there,
That room composed to the
Shades of your hair
And colours your dress
Made there as you
Moved about, con-
sidering, preparing;
Used too to the lights
on the wall,
Leaves falling,
That lateness of scent
When smoke tells
And winds relent their force
That room as silent still as
Flowers faded there.
32