Knopf Doubleday, Belletristik, Easy (Englisch, Marie Ponsot, 2011)

THIS BRIDGE, LIKE POETRY, IS VERTIGO In a time of dearth bring forth number, weight, & measure. &mdash WILLIAM BLAKE Describing the wind that drives it, cloud rides between earth and space. Cloud shields earth from sun-scorch. Cloud bursts to cure earth&rsquo s thirst. Cloud &mdash airy, wet, photogenic&mdash is a bridge or go-between it does as it is done by. It condenses. It evaporates. It draws seas up, rains down. I do love the drift of clouds. Cloud-love is irresistible, untypical, uninfinite. Deep above the linear city this morning the cloud&rsquo s soft bulk is almost unmoving. The winds it rides are thin it makes them visible. As sun hits it or if sun quits us it&rsquo s blown away or rains itself or snows itself away. It is indefinite: This dawns on me: no cloud is measurable. Make mine cloud. Make mind cloud. The clarity of cloud is in its edgelessness, its each instant of edge involving in formal invention, always at liberty, at it, incessantly altering. A lucky watcher will catch it as it makes big moves: up the line of sight it lifts until it conjugates or dissipates, its unidentical being intact though it admits flyers. It lets in wings. It lets them go. It lets them. It embraces mountains & spires built to be steadfast as it goes on it lets go of them. It is not willing. It is not unwilling. Late at night when my outdoors is indoors, I picture clouds again: Come to mind, cloud. Come to cloud, mind. LAST Waste-pipe sweat, unchecked, has stained the floor under the kitchen sink. For twenty years it&rsquo s eased my carelessness into a mean soft place, its dirty secret dark, in a common place. Today the pipe&rsquo s fixed. Workmen rip up the floor that&rsquo s served and nagged me all these good/bad years. They cut and set in new boards, to last for years. House-kept no more, I waltz out of the place clean-shod and leave no footprint on the floor, displaced and unfloored. This year, nothing goes to waste. TV, EVENING NEWS &mdash seen on CNN, autumn 2005, Afghanistan It&rsquo s a screenful of chaos but the cameraman&rsquo s getting good framing shots from behind one woman&rsquo s back. The audio&rsquo s poor. The shouts are slices of noise. I don&rsquo t know the languages. No hot hit heroes are there. No wicked people are there. Achilles is not there, or Joshua either. Rachel is not there, nor Sojourner Truth. Iwo Jima flag boys? not there. Twin Towers first defenders? not there. My children are thank God not there any more or less than you and I are not there. I safe screen-watch. A youth young in his uniform signals his guard squad twice: OK go, to the tanks and the cameramen: OK go. The tank takes the house wall. The house genuflects. The tank proceeds. The house kneels. The roof dives. The woman howls. Dust rises. They cut to the next shot. The young men and the woman breathe the dust of the house which now is its prayer. A dust cloud rises, at one with the prayer of all the kneeling houses asking to be answered and answerable anywhere.