Four poems for Emmanuel Hocquard

(1940-2019)

1.

As if it could be taught. Sedimentation, the ruins

of elegy, light. So lush. No words

but the imagination.

2.

A word at the heart of it, Runcible Valley deep. A lemon

is difficult. This thread

of disappearance, truth and failure. Thirteen blackbirds.

Distraction. We might be

writing, folding laundry, tending

the orphaned moment. Wait: I am

inventing a machine of usable atoms. It is

those feet, in snow.

3.

How I learned to stop worrying,

and. Fill in the blank. A poem

less than portable. I keep these portraits

of material. Say, a silence. Whittled

to a hush.

4.

Foot paths

confuse the wilderness. The wood:

a sentence, divided. Speak to me. A book

I might forever write. I am

alive, I am alive, I am

impossibly alive. I am most likely dead.