Ledger Domain

A morning's silver announces sky

Speech bent the tree into a new posture

My smile is becoming different from you.

—becoming—and you crave an earlier affection

Where was the silver becoming from?

Who forgets that we dream—who forgets we dream

The dark is near! That loss was dark; there that's darker!

A page, we become

* * *

You read the page

—you read this page

Once upon a once there was a once

and that once evaporated into air

it was said it once was all over the sky

then once came back and died

You understood what I saw

You understood everything

—close the door now

It knows where to be

Here, can you explain?

A light bulb replaced the silver

* * *

The page is silvery—almost as silver

—announced a child—

When it went to the town

—it had changed

When it became the town

—it changed its shape

Afterword said it didn't have its own way

It didn't have a once in its life—

a once and for all

It took a wife . . .

The end, the ending

* * *

Children ran from the tree

Silver poured from the sky

—in the garden birds bathed—

bathing in the garden birds sang

It was dizzy in the air and rosy on the wind

Once once came along and spoke to the bride

It thought the wood enchanted

Afterword said it was empty

Afterword came too and spoke to the groom

It thought the world was wide

Afterword said it was narrow

* * *

Syntax bent the child

—playing on the page

Speech—be quiet!

To see you reflected in the smudged window now.

Night reminds one of fingerprints—

unlike a face

—in its orbit

Tips of hair sweep by like fronds

—"just like fronds!"—you exclaim

—show me the fronds if you please

* * *

Becoming a tree

—the children . . .

Becoming a page

—the birds in unison

From here to the nervous system—A body sang

Suspended above the page

Above the total mass of trees

Willows bend to console the child

From here to . . .

—a lovely thing—

Becoming a tree

* * *

Let us return to speech—

Silver morning—bent to break

—syntax

Up there on a stage

Children carry silver leaves

—carry birds on their heads

You fasten me with your songs

The Fables say—

where a page is a page

and a tree tree

I used to be a book

Now I am a book

All the endings say

All the dreams say

All the children say

* * *

Once upon a once there was a once

and that once evaporated into air

it was said it once was all over the sky

then once came back and died

It was said—

my smile is becoming a page

—becoming an adventure

It sang—

my smile is what the children say

Copyright Credit: Peter Gizzi, "Ledger Domain" from In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011. Copyright © 2014 by Peter Gizzi. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Source: In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011 (Wesleyan University Press, 2014)