In Which We Speak
Alex Andriesse
| poetry
You will not remember my face,
said the Angel,
in the imperium of woe,
but there are some compensations
to be had by the eye:
the cities in shadow,
the fields in light,
clouds like great ships massed
in the blue.
Oh, forgetfulness,
you only seem the enemy
from this side of the river
while I still pulse with veins,
grow cancerous,
remember my youth.
In the boat I will watch
the robust boatman steer
the miserable crowd of us
toward the further shore;
by the time we arrive,
I will have vomited
the contents of my former mind
and forgot forgetting.
Oh, Angel, I thank you
for letting the light seem
something other
than a rank intrusion
on the dark.
Alex Andriesse is a writer, a translator, and an associate editor at Dalkey Archive Press. His writing has appeared in Prodigal, Reading in Translation, and the Battersea Review. His translation of Chateaubriand’s Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768–1800 is published by New York Review of Books. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.