monday poem #211: Mark Doty, "Theory of Incompletion"
Mark Doty's My Alexandria is one of my favorite books of poetry; I've felt less compelled by the books that have followed. But with Fire to Fire -- well, I don't know whether he's returned to form or I've changed enough to be the right audience again, but I loved the new poems collected here.
Theory of Incompletion
I'm painting the apartment, elaborate project,
edging doorways and bookcases,
two coats at least, and on the radio
-the cable opera station-something
I don't know, Handel's Semele,
and either it's the latex fumes or the music itself
but I seem never to have heard anything so radiant,
gorgeous rising tiers of it
ceasing briefly then cascading again,
as if baroque music were a series of waterfalls
pouring in the wrong direction, perpetually up
and up, twisting toward the empyrean.
When a tenor-playing the role of a god,
perhaps the god of art?-calls for unbridled joy
the golden form of his outburst
matches the solar confidence of its content,
and I involuntarily say, ah,
I am so swept up by the splendor,
on my ladder, edging the trim
along the crown molding, up where
the fumes concentrate. I am stroking
the paint onto every formerly white inch,
and of course I know Semele will end,
but it doesn't seem it ever has to:
this seemingly endless chain of glorious conclusions,
writhing stacked superb filigree
-let it open out endlessly,
let door after door be slid back
to reveal the next cadence,
the new phrasing, onward and on.
I am stilled now, atop my ladder,
leaning back onto the rungs, am the rapture
of denied closure, no need to go anywhere,
entirety forming and reasserting itself, an endless
-self-enfolding, self-devouring-
of which Handel constructs a model
in music's intricate apportionment
of minutes. And then there's barely a beat
of a pause before we move on to Haydn,
and I am nowhere near the end of my work.
- Mark Doty
from Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth
Theory of Incompletion
I'm painting the apartment, elaborate project,
edging doorways and bookcases,
two coats at least, and on the radio
-the cable opera station-something
I don't know, Handel's Semele,
and either it's the latex fumes or the music itself
but I seem never to have heard anything so radiant,
gorgeous rising tiers of it
ceasing briefly then cascading again,
as if baroque music were a series of waterfalls
pouring in the wrong direction, perpetually up
and up, twisting toward the empyrean.
When a tenor-playing the role of a god,
perhaps the god of art?-calls for unbridled joy
the golden form of his outburst
matches the solar confidence of its content,
and I involuntarily say, ah,
I am so swept up by the splendor,
on my ladder, edging the trim
along the crown molding, up where
the fumes concentrate. I am stroking
the paint onto every formerly white inch,
and of course I know Semele will end,
but it doesn't seem it ever has to:
this seemingly endless chain of glorious conclusions,
writhing stacked superb filigree
-let it open out endlessly,
let door after door be slid back
to reveal the next cadence,
the new phrasing, onward and on.
I am stilled now, atop my ladder,
leaning back onto the rungs, am the rapture
of denied closure, no need to go anywhere,
entirety forming and reasserting itself, an endless
-self-enfolding, self-devouring-
of which Handel constructs a model
in music's intricate apportionment
of minutes. And then there's barely a beat
of a pause before we move on to Haydn,
and I am nowhere near the end of my work.
- Mark Doty
from Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth