• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘Death Is a Wind That Will Carry You Off’

March 2, 2013 by Jan Herman

This poem is not intended as a companion piece to “Music for the End of Time.” The tone is entirely different, not at all apocalyptic. But it covers the same or similar ground, and I can’t help thinking that the difference in treatment is a merely a matter of temperament. Which is enough:


Abbie Conant

Death is a wind that will carry you off
sometime before the following dawn.
It may start with a lake-scented draft
from the cane break behind the house,
or a breeze through an open door
filling your nostrils with your
mother’s party perfume: White Gardenia.
Rolling over your body like a North Pacific wave:
the remembering, bringing the end of time.
The dying dog you fed, the crying child you
comforted; these will stay in the panner’s mesh.
But the soul-blackening betrayals will crumble away
with time itself and the dark pockmarks of your
heart will fall like sad rain to the departing earth.
Your eyes will be as vast as the sky that opens
around you and you will wonder how they remained
so obediently in your head.
Your bones will be gone. Your head will leak into all
air, your hands become breath.
Below, you will hear the weeping at the end of a bad opera.
It will not occur to you that you could be missed by anyone.
You will be following the irresistible scent of a rose
in full bloom not knowing you are in motion.
Not knowing you are nowhere to be found.

—Abbie Conant, 2009

Excerpted from 35 of Abbie Conant’s poems, posted by William Osborne, her co-conspirator in life and music. He writes that he has collected her poems “from notebooks and scattered papers she leaves here and there.” There are published poets I’ve known who would turn green with envy at what she sheds. Here’s another from the scattering:

I loll in time, bask in piles of minutes
that I know will run out like tacks in a
carpenter’s jar.

A whole day before me like a feast of hours,
embraces me in seeming eternity that darkens
at nightfall.

I am left wondering at splashed stars on the
roof of being, the moon like an owl
looking back at me as I stand in the cooling yard
among the sleepers stretched out in
their beds,
in tidy houses just far apart enough to not
offend like business men positioned just so in
an elevator.

My time here is measured with your heartbeat.
Your eyes float in space, see me, are silent.
They are beautiful when you remember to love
me, sere and punctured when you do not.

I am an exoskeleton, whose fresh, winged life
is with you.

Not here at all.

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit

Filed Under: Literature

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...