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The
History of Anonymity
I had the fog's countenance
and
it was good. It took me
to the seaside cliffs
where I watched the seaside
from a crevice. Cold,
unctuous stone, I sat and
saw
the darkness grow
and grow. Could this be
the afterworld?
I am in this world,
I am two parts water
to one part salt, I am
conciliatory
as a chair.
In The History of Anonymity,
the glacier longs to be water,
and each granule of salt
begs a lesser atom.
We will know each other
less, the voice
writes.
I am already
in
this afterworld.
You will find me where the
I am two parts…
*
Once,
I traveled to a shore
where I knew tide pools would form.
I loved the sea anemones,
loose flowers
or creatures of all mouth,
moving more as water
than as live things. Their mouths on my
ankles,
on my fingers, I wanted to be devoured
and could hear exhales
and inhales
whisper through water. Crouched,
I saw this
as waving. So much
to the sea is seeing. I studied its
inconstancy,
its strange inability
to depart
for good. What if I said:
Stay off the shore. It is my shore
and nothing shall enter it.
THE END,
finito, Quod erat
demonstrandum: never return.
See.
That simple.
*
from Page 333 of The History
of Anonymity --
The ocean swallowed my diary.
It swallowed my words. I have secrets from
you. You with no
name, do you love me who is
without a face? Or do you
love me without
a sound? In your arms, I am
further and we are
one apparition-disperse
and sing
quietly.
I believe,
you are beginning
to understand me.
Are we not
the same
difference, the same
sums multiplied into an air
abandoned. Weren't you too
born of an empty room? We lack
a bloom. Isn't that
where we are?
Rootless. Love,
we are
gone.
*
I swam to not drown:
the difference between the two is one stroke.
The water had made me ill.
Submerged, my body--a wave, the sea's
disciple--was gone. My will,
a willing pawn. The world was all
sea long ago,
in the before world. I imagine,
it was much like the afterworld.
Three thoughts and a wave could drag me
to shore
or pull me under. The voice:
To not be is to be free. Beautiful pliability,
for once, I was without
questions, a mouth full of salt and seaweed,
kept afloat by heat
and blood. One stroke against the undertow,
or one stroke for.
*
from page 456 of The History of Anonymity
--
I have never liked walking
or listening. Both make me feel more alone.
I listened once
for a rarer bird. Too many gulls
grace this place,
their accompaniment of the tide's yes &
no.
Anonymity is not a name
but an entrance. I won't tell you
where I've gone. Love pains
us
with knowing. You want to turn the page,
to define every open
vowel. O - that's where I begin
and end, O… no
gasp, please; read nothing into this. It
is no music
the ocean makes. The sea,
the shore, whatever you choose
to call it, I won't be
there. I won't
*
This tide pool pockets five pink stones.
At high tide, there will be
none.
There will not even be a pool.
And at low tide,
what then?
Perhaps anonymity is the ocean floor
without the ocean.
Then it must also be
the ground we walk on.
Those five pink stones
and their life of subtraction,
their dustward ambition.
I would be good at that.
The water had made me ill.
I sat in shallower ripples,
counting dried-out starfish--
they died open-handed, golden--
I sat with two tight fists in my lap.
Were each fist a stone,
I would know the ocean floor, I would
attend the ocean's departure.
Often
I do not see myself
as different.
Then the day comes
when I do not see myself at all. Shadows
limn my breath
and motion. What is
speaking: a voice
or a mistake of hearing?
First, I was known,
*
then unknown.
You don't believe me. You think, if there
is a voice,
there is a soul, but you are
young, your gestures suggest
your composition: stolen wings
of birds, laughable
accidents, and the kindest lies.
They died brittle, holding nothing.
A starfish is a cruel hand,
will choke a sea urchin with
its cruel clasp.
I have seen this many times.
Seen the sea urchin turn
anonymous, seen it limp
and lose its shell.
Six dried-out starfish
around a dried-out pool,
one
with each finger torn.
My voice
is always becoming another voice.
There were nights of evaporation:
the ocean made a fog, fixed above
and yet, drifting into the
next valley.
Did the fog make an ocean there?
I won't say I am loneliest at night--
the water had made me ill--
but every night I saw
an entrance, and saw
the tides, at their highest,
stand still.
Waves are waves
and wind
their counterpoint.
And what am I?
*
from page 910 of The History of Anonymity
Mostly, I have forgotten that world.
I had a face
then, gave it up. The eyes
were gray. Or green, a color
like a growl. I have
forgotten. In the afterworld, every
we
is an I.
Does knowing this soothe you?
Your longing
has a clean finish;
mine echoes its hollow chord,
is too frail.
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