Hall - The Certainty Dream

The Certainty Dream Kate Hall
Coach House Books | Toronto
copyright Kate Hall, 2009 first edition
This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 77056 257 8. Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also appreciates the financial support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit program and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Hall, Kate, 1977 The certainty dream/ Kate Hall. Poems. Title. Title.

PS8565.A44847C47 2009 C811'.54 C2009-904274-6
for Sarah Partridge
I have even lost the precise comprehension of what
I seek and yet I am engaged in the search.
Jean-Paul Sartre CONTENTS The vastness of the sea is missing. It is called blackbird. Blackbird recollects mast, rigging and hull floating out there intact. Blackbird until a swarm of dragonfly-looking things. Blackbird in the well. Blackbird in a circle closes around and eyes a sandwich.

Blackbird, then the throat. Blackbird loves the dog and hates the baby. Blackbird misses the throat. Blackbird sprays the eye and screams. Blackbird appliqud overtop and peeling back. Blackbird gives way and the inside of the earth.

Blackbird like an unfinished basement. Blackbird lives among the Vikings. Blackbird holds up a bulldozer like a trophy. Blackbird sums up the ending except for the guilt. Blackbird is what blackbird wants. you have felt the world shrinking all this time you feel yourself growing into it you let yourself be the shape of it yes you are in the graveyard yes it has gone too far the sky has turned into a replica of your mouth and you are about to swallow the whole world with you in it you know it was meant for you when you dance with it in the street you let it lead and it takes your wrist your hip ever so delicately your hip you gather your small things you have felt it coming all this time you have nothing to call it yes you are in the bus station with everything spread against the cold floor yes you are scratching against the place where no thing is yes you are I looked at you looking at your miniature horses, your model boat with its small captains wheel.

You must have gotten smaller to fit yourself
into that space. I must have. At some point I was at the stern and you were alone at the bow with your kaleidoscope.
We paraded too many living things into that tiny vessel. Entirely new species could be made through overcrowding. We were busy on deck,
afraid to lift that wooden door. The lions could be the same old lions that populate every plain and we were ready for something new.
We thought we saw land.

We wanted land. who have been denied a tree semantics who have been denied a sentence stop who could just as well have been buffalo or ants whose existence is insignificant in that sense who must make something more of themselves also not birds for whom there is weakness, exhaustion and disease who are thus starting to understand the contextual use of despite who are not conscious really who are merely display just now are displaying who are continuous but will not continue those whom I collected objects are simple whom I used for research pictures of facts whom I forced into a small fragmented area the complex name
those whom I made
strings of words
featherless In the gap between what one wants to say (or what one perceives thereis to say) and what one can say (what is sayable), words provide fora collaboration and desertion. Lyn Hejinian Many blocks
of sentences
make a nice
castle You can go on saying but you can never recover the pattern of small roses not even in the patternof small roses. Thats the crack in the sidewalk you turned into a shape. So drop it. The window needs to be fixed; its gaping. Neurath decided the body of knowledge is a raft that floats free of any anchor.

We have to stand somewhere. Repairs must be made afloat. Feeling of impending disaster: he liked detective novels and puzzles too. I scrabbled my name into your book. It became my life. Thats the beauty of it.

Riddles are much heavier than tea leaves because they make points of intersection: ask and answer. Weare not forgetting the patience of the mad, their love of detail. When you say it like that I cannot know if Im really knowing. There are socks in the underwear drawer. Who can argue with that? Our mothers were both in the kitchen clanging pots, standing back to back so I could measure who was taller. Astigmatism makes me see double. Disaster in the bathtub: contained waves, small splinters of wood drift around you as you move.

My life doesnt make sense. There are always elaborate coffee grounds at the bottom. I thought of liver, kidneys and lungs as drying fruit. My autobiography unravels there. Only forty-five years. What happens at the end of the book? Tomorrow I wont speak.

Ill walk everywhere and barefoot. If I cant walk, Ill swim. If I cant swim, Ill crouch pressing one hand into the dirt to steady myself. With the other, Ill gather twigs. In dark churches, certain boxes are locked. Im one of those tourists, when held back from the incorruptible by an iron railing, jostles for a peek at the small window you cant really see through.

Theres no one at the prayer candles. Weve lit all our wishes on fire and they give off too much light.
On a commercial break I start wishing the blue volleyball team will win. When they do, the final point is scored like this: the ball is a white streak right down the line and no one moves to receive it.
If they play again, it will not be today. Today I have a lot to answer for. Fifteen people are jumping but fifteen other people are crying and only a fine webbing separates them.
I hope that something in the locked box will make up for this. Is it a real heart? A real heart would stink and rot and fall apart.

Behind us, fire is sucking up wishes. Its melting the pillars theyre standing on. Its possible to love your mother even though youre genetically deficient and shes genetically deficient and our deficiencies make a big hole in the ground. Eventually each of us will have to decide whether to get cremated or buried in a fancy casket. Evolution is about the genes manipulating the bodies they ride in. Little girls wish for ponies without realizing their parents have already turned them into genetic horses.

We are encoded but we have not yet completely broken ourselves. Genes can turn on suddenly like a light bulb. This is a cause of cancer. God we are amazing biological gadgets. They cross-bred two strains of mice. The genes are an instruction manual, an identity machine.

The rats are right; I am frighteningly like my mother. We are hardly here. The container for water and information. We drew on rocks. We figured out the word sea. We figured out the words basin and submarine.

I shattered a glass washing the dishes. I banged it against another and underwater one of them had to give. I used to be a great birdwatcher until the kingfishers flew away, and I missed them and still understood nothing about flight after examining the wing structure. Its a beautifully invented design. Its a consequence. Sea basin. Sea basin.