Marie Ponsot (1921–2019)

COMETING

I like to drink my language in
straight up, no ice no twist no spin
----no fruity phrases, just unspun
words trued right toward a nice
idea, for chaser. True's a risk.
Take it I say. Do true for fun.

We say water is taught by thirst
earth by ocean diving
birds by the lift of the heart

oh that lift
----curative, isn't it----
a surge a sursum as
words become us
we come alive lightly
saying Oh

*
at the wordstream of sentences
transparent in their consequence
cometing before our eyes
trailing crystalline
across our other sky
and we drink from it
for the jolt of language
for its lucid hit
of bliss, the surprise.

Mrs. Ponsot is a friend of my consort's, and a lady of quite noble vintage (90 quite soon); as you see from the above, pp60-61 in the book, she's lost not one step in her grande-dame-hood. I loved the clear, refreshing dip I took into the 52 poems in "Easy: Poems".

I am always delighted by poets whose impulse is to communicate not obfuscate; I love Wallace Stevens and WH Auden and Sharon Olds, and of course Mrs. Ponsot, for their sharp eyes and their stiletto-thin pencils. These lines are so well crafted that you can cut yourself on them:

"...From its baseboard stares
the head of a boar made
by someone who had seen a boar.

Cornered, caved, tarnishing
regardless in the dark at the back
edge of a royal burial, it sucked
the dust of three skulls
of three young women
whose heads it crushed
as it was planted there.
...
two singers and a lutanist, untarnished,
breakable, intentional, faithful
servants and instruments of song.
..."
--from "What Speaks Out", pp44-45

May I, and all I love, be able to create such wonderful, bright, unsparing beauty as we close in on our centenaries. This is how to do Getting Old. Brava, Marie Ponsot, and many many thanks for paying forward your dark-adapted eye.… (more)