• Jen Crawford

 

          for Pina Bausch

 

a white cliff of hearing water

is hearing a cliff-nest boiled in milk.

whiter the sea-mews boil in the jaws,

swim up through the hearing,

see through.

 

yonder a yolk, a yellow mew

falls from the sun to the milk

and we meet, climb the cliff’s veins

dry off in the clothespines

as pins in shadow, thin but holding

warm stones in hands

 

pina is a blue tree, shadow,

tall, with humorous hands

that is viscous hands transducing

the wrapping arms transducing

in fingers fine hairs

on the backs of warm stones

 

on the backs of the root

threaded dirt, animals thread

saccade saccade the city of trees

with cinderblock city with

warm stones in hands.

 

one of her animal bodies

folds to the lee as a city

another of her bodies

is heard and folds to the lee

 

 

pina was a blue tree, our shadow. tall. with humorous feet, that is, with viscous feet
focusing yolk in the pressure of a round, streaking up the bark the jellied form of
touch, an arm wrapped, dropped, wrapping a learnt persistence, learning not to
continue but to persist, returning to love in movement, in being rooted as the
movement across the floor, roots canvassing the floor roots describing the ground of
the whole cliff, a severance gelid transacted, breath of an eye in the first node the
second node the third root hairs projecting to wall for transduction

                   saccade         saccade saccade the blood through the bark terminal
branched for arrivals on the back of the threaded dirt current saccade the root bank
and dropping, arm wraps and                 dropping, seeing pins fall         in the opening
trees

 

                                                            so you’re walking around with painfully frozen

                       gallstones in your hand (or stones of the gizzard of a giant bird smooth

                                              and round smooth) round and warm in this frozen town

 

                                           where the plaster figure of a bird centres the odd facade

                                                                 catches ice that holds paint on till it melts

                                                                                                               and you see

                                                                                                        because you can

 

                                                                                                            over the giant

                                                                                                               damask rose

                                                                                                          season to come

 

 

a giant set

of blue trees. pina, what you said

in the taxi was

I am the back of the taxi, blue and all

over you

you were just something that came up in looking through

like my one tree blue over another tree blue,

fragrant that’s all and I danced you. but you weren’t

that dance. chainsaw. stacked cakes ooze. now who now who. driver don’t mind

I’m pressed up into windows and full of transport, blonde cakes and the sticky

sharp view

 

on the crumbling edge,

then on the hard substrate

 

soft,

recently fallen.