Poetry Quebec

Four poems were published on the Poetry Quebec website, on July 1.
 http://www.poetry-quebec.com/pq/poems/article_424.shtml

Jack Hannan: 4 poems

Watermark

There was a form of opening outward in our thinking,

which seemed very real and became

a thing that one person

could actually give to another, this lasted

for a long time, until it lost some of its liveliness

and grew a little crazy, without change, into a sort of abuse, nearly gestural, though there can be no blame in it, the night

gathers into its hours the stars and your coming home

in and out of the light of each post, your speed

is a naming that draws

those white lines across the sky, pulling day

through its sieve down around you until morning, now

the anxiety shakes itself off

again, to be remembered only obscurely

as a star, a phrase,

in the odd wake-up calm, lemon-tasty, and coffee,

an old friend

reappears, and you allow yourself the thought that

this is the one who can really know me, somehow

the patience you must find

is right there, like the light in a pumpkin, it is given

over to you to understand the pictures

through their touch, the singing lessons ask more   

questions than they answer

to you, shy horse,

day after day my door has been open, and I'd say now

nothing has changed, I have been nocturnal and that

altered nothing also, it only

made the  superstitions worse, he

removed his boots to collect mementos

that could be brought back, into glass, and another

plain meaning, hyphen or adjunct

---

In cities without evening

Isn't it rather difficult for a man

to keep quiet? I have the tape of your voice

and I play it often. I am thankful for the hindrance

you've put my way. Hear the night? Finally

 worry, in autumn

I took it down to match the wall

no longer so warmly graced

I would like to learn another way to approach you

who are so often with me, in my thoughts

along the roads here that we walk, I feel funny imagining

my furrowed brow and how

that must seem to you, have you forgotten how long

my arms really are? I still like

those bright colours as I seem to recall them (the red

hat and coat, for one) in the rice-paper morning, oh no

I hadn't meant to speak like that, the crisp

tinge or tingle in the air

---

 5 For example

Your fingers are long and thin and the colour of my heartbeat

Your fingers trace lines across the sand,

Your fingers draw astonishing moments

Your fingers curl slightly, your nails

tapping the surface of existence

clear and hard

And you are not patient

Your fingers are my phenomenological refutation

Your fingers are more than my memory has brought to the surface

Your fingers are the directions

Your fingers are this night

Your fingers are the sounds of the wind through the trees in Rome

Your fingers stretch across a month of afternoons

And the doors swing open and are tied with string

Your fingers are the breeze soothing the spine of a stupid talking head

Your fingers are the technical healing of electrical patter, silence

Your fingers are the arrows of voyages

That are never said out loud

I am curious and I wonder about disappearing and

Your fingers with one oval silver ring trace a long suggestive line across the map

from here to, say, anywhere along the Atlantic coast

your fingers covered with the taste of sea salt

---

Assume a void

Assume a void exists without

the hands of your own need, and already

something moves toward filling it,

so even in that silence you can trust

plain song, what felt like nothing, becoming.

The character of that silence moves out into the clear

of the valley, the lights, the silence

is of listening before you go on, as it comes

into your head, a young girl's sleepy eyes closing

at midnight, dreaming

the attraction of things, the mountains, the lovely

textures of the distances she will travel. Someone sings

her, and she dreams my whole world, the song

mustn't end before the dreaming.

---

These poems are from Jack Hannon's book of poems Some Frames, Cormorant Books, 2011