MICHAEL BRODSKY
233
own detestable metabolism, that I strove toward them, as the hunter
strives toward the wounded beast whose spoor is all but illegible, to
appropriate,
to
round them off with the definitive articulation. The
utterance refractory to paraphrase, that was the finishing stroke. But
the more I groped the more the lucidity they held out eluded me. But
then again, I always managed to articulate something, kissing cousin
to
a stammer perhaps, if not the thought itself, the flight that had not
flown , then all the discomforts groping toward articulation caused me.
In my stable there is no dung that cannot be converted to fodder. But it
occurs to me that if I am speaking of thoughts then I should speak of
them as if they were pebbles or pellets of compost. I shoul.d speak of
them as if they were palpable entities in the real world. That would
keep you guessing and enable me to pay my dues
to
narrative. Only
there are times when one must burst the seams of narrative. This is one
of them. The fruit of hubris is baptized in bile anyway. Anyway, I am
most comfortable groping anyway, or at least I am most inured to
groping. And if I am put off the scent then I proliferate symptoms
to
beguile my bewilderment.
I found it difficult
to
let my thoughts brew once she was gone. For
to
let them brew is
to
lose them,
to
await their disappearance in their
offspring. Every time I thought of her I wrote down my thought, on
one of the envelopes I was supposed to be sorting what did it matter. I
hung them up on the mantle as it were, let them dry, I was warming
them with my regret for their eviction. They fumed a little as artifacts
fume when you unearth them. But there were other lists too, of my
infirmities, her farewell gift. Her departure was not the cause as much
as the occasion for their recrudescence. All along I had underestimated
L.
The decorum confused me. She had existed after all only to depart,
to
take her decorum with her. Whereas F. existed to persist, to be
forever dimly visible. There are women who exist to depart and women
who exist to persist. Dramas are elaborated from the futile striving of
one species to be the other. Perhaps it is the same with men, though
men have their deep voices and meager repertory of gestures, to
disguise, or at least mute, their ambivalence. Nothing is denied women
in the realm of gesture. Perhaps that was what restrained me in my
gesticu lation, the fear of being taken for a woman. But if I did not have
a woman I had a list. By dint of repetition the entries become a
poultice. There is lyricism in miscellany. Words send out roots that
intertwine. Words that never met before are subjected to, begin to take
pleasure in, juxtaposition. They fend for themselves, emit lines of
force, saturate each other until you begin to wonder why you never
