from TROIS VERSIONS DE L’INAVOUBLE: THE AUTOPSY LYRICS
Act 5
so much/ for the love of the hunt
+
in which to be human is dangerous
+
LAZARUS’ death is theatrical I am tempted to say even iambic.
Everyone rises to the occasion.
No Bird puts on a shabby suit, la Belle invites the darkness to take a seat, &
for the next three days I stop
paying attention. It is their grief, not mine. Their suffering
seems holy I cant imagine it.
+
BUT this moment of clarity lasts no more than
twenty seconds. Achilles, puzzled that a man
would die so easily, turns &
runs. The soft breeze around him hums, I think
+
ITS so hot even the birds have stopped
talking. You’ve been
there. I loved
you so much once la Belle
says. I did. Can you/
believe it.
We were so intimate. Once
upon a time I cant/ believe
it now
+
TRAGEDY makes
an
indistinguishab
le
forest, or a started psalm,
with deer love changes
hands white light cancels
the landscape.
Lazarus doesnt get
the phone. He doesnt/ get it.
& when No
Bird says did we stop
understanding we
have named things
for
what they do, &
how did we forget so
much?
Under the unforgivable
moon there
is: a little anger
growing inside the
liquor
+
ITS la Belle’s birthday & against the overly
detailed
& desperate understory she is bending
parallel lines to make the ends
meet:
I have she says become reconciled.
I know Achilles says
you’re hurting I know a lot/ of
things.
+
LAZARUS was gone of course but there
was something else, something worse.
The earth muttering to herself, the universe in
its empty bowl, a deer committing suicide the
way you would expect it to...
You dont No Bird says
have to want every piece of is that
it. Why/ so hard?
(The white peacock spreads his
fan.) (Achilles wishes for a sense
of theater.) (Some water flows
up/ hill.) (Lazarus makes a few
green manoeuvers.) (La Belle
draws flowers or Millet’s bear or
a fawn rippt apart by lions.) (So
careful youd think she was
merciful.) (She was already a
person.) He
could never afford to see that.
+
ACHILLES
walks on his head &
sees the sky
below, as an abyss
He is paying attention
only to
himself half-ruined
& not, you
know, a
complete blank it
seems ungrateful he
says why
pull it to pieces
+
THE extravagant sun props its elbows
on a dream with traitors in the blueberries & lovers
who dont
know what they want. Posed in a
white dress on her side la Belle
reads it
like a fish, in two directions at once she leaves
nothing to chance she is young, &
someone has packed her with dead
people to make it seem/ less empty
+
WHAT you cant remember
(almost everything—
IT is not enough.
It is never enough.
It seemed to Achilles then.
It seems to Achilles now,
riding in an automobile,
with
an incomprehensible heartbeat
on this Beckett
afternoon with all the world
tilting winterward
& only one
window rolled down but it doesnt
matter because its raining
+
THE trees dont move, or the
moon.
La Belle is drinking fine à l’eau &
avoiding the disadvantage of
not knowing
how drunk she is.
Some things No Bird says cant
be seen until they are drawn what looks
for example like Jacob's ladder
is probably the North Star.
In the distance the sun sets between a
gate of swords. An egg slides down
the galaxy.
That Lazarus says is the least of your problems.
(I have news for you.)
(When the stars rolled
out of their skins & died.)
(Barefoot in a fur coat talking to
someone on the telephone.)
La Belle talks a lot about
love in the end. I guess we
all will.