Pontchartrain: A Resurrection
Pontchartrain: A Resurrection
“And I guess / Death will blow his little fucking trumpet.” - Larry Levis
Where they build walls to keep the bodies
in where trees sashay like dresses and this water
birth where all the womb is cracked:
sidewalk a mountain range, paint a sunburn,
domains laced in wrought
iron crowns of thorns .
This thin veil between:
E flat and speaking
brass and sway
laughter and grief
death and life
water before
after
Today’s an exciting day because I got to respond to a line that has been rattling in my brain for years. For some reason the Larry Levis line from this incredible poem has been unshakable and, after a recent trip to New Orleans, has found renewed resonance and meaning.
As mentioned in an earlier poem, while bumbling around New Orleans I was reading Rebecca Solnit’s atlas “Unfathomable City.” One notion that I keep thinking about (paraphrasing) is that an atlas is fundamentally a distinction of where land stops and water begins. Solnit goes on to say that this distinction is nearly impossible to draw in a place like New Orleans. Each of the successive Atlases paint a portrait of a place that is more meld than binary, a porous city of curved lines and perforations.
I found myself taken with the city and its radical sense of place, its grand live oaks, the kindness of the people there, the food … and the many facets of marching bands.
With gratitude,
I loved getting to revisit “La Strada” after reading “The Darkening Trapeze” in 2016. That line has never left me either, but I hadn’t thought about it in awhile.
Loved the way the imagery felt like an atlas here. The almost-ominous ending “water before / after” shook me more than I expected on my second read through. It felt somewhat Biblical, akin to and paraphrasing “the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of Our Lord stands forever.” A conclusion equal parts comforting and concerning. Nature and this world continues long after our life goes, a humbling while still peppered with a bit of existentialism.
Loved the water birth and womb imagery as well.