Preface to a Poem after Ingeborg Bachmann
“When I use the word after below the title of a poem, what follows is not a translation but an
imitation which should be read as though it were an original English poem.” In his “Note,” with
which he opens Lord Weary’s Castle, Robert Lowell makes heavenly hay of his own rule by a
well-struck use of the subjunctive tense. In the sentence, “as though it were” contains within it
intimate suggestion of “since it is not,” re: “an original English poem.” And “but,” so placed
between “a translation” and “an imitation,” is a hinge one can only interpret as moves in either
direction, a hinge that keeps the old meaning, “nevertheless,” close at hand. What Lowell is
doing then, in making such ample space between the reader and her inclination to perhaps
deem anything of his that follows “after” as being “a translation,” is, in effect, warding the reader
off; Lowell is telling the reader, this poem, it’s not Rimbaud’s, it’s mine, and there is no space for
anything other than my vision. But it is a vision whose note, though it wards off, delimits the
limits that are set by a prose which must, nevertheless, run through etymology, the life-blood of
any poetry. Lowell creates space in his vision for the reader to choose, to believe him, and
alternately, to disbelieve him. But I am not Lowell. I cannot suspend your disbelief. I can only
ask you, however difficult, to take it to heart, that the poem that follows is mine, it is not
Bachmann’s.
—Matthew Moore
FALL EXERCISE
I get not to say: that’s yesterday’s. With worthless
summer dust in the turn-outs we idle again on the
chaff’s scornfulness, in time’s fall exercise. And
the exit route south isn’t coming to us, as the
fuckers, come in hand. Ended, on the eve,
fishmongers and cruisers pull, and, all too often, a
smithereen of dream-fed marble cuts me, where I
am tender, through loveliness, to the eyes.
Lots I read in the papers about the coldness and
its consequence, on the foolish and the toll, on
the dispossessed, murderers and myriads on ice
floes, though about what I please, a little.
Whatever for? Ere the beggar knocking at noon,
thinking he’s rubber, because it is armistice, and
one wishes to spare oneself the sight, but not in a
rainstorm before the joyless deaths of leaves.
Let’s take a journey! Let’s sit under cypress trees
or even under palm trees, or in the orange groves,
toward sunsets at reduced prices to behold the
many ones that have never been seen! Let us
forget the unanswered letters to yesterday! Time
does wonders. Although time is unjust to us, with
its pounding of debt: we are not at the house. In
the heart’s cellar, sleepless, I find I’m again on
the chaff’s scornfulness, in time’s fall exercise.