Anamorphosis of a voice

par Graeme Thomson

Ne change rien

Il s’agit du travail, finalement
Le travail d’une voix

on ne le voit pas

Peines perdues
tu n’as rien vu

Get your disappointment in first
work is what must never show its face

or voice
 

not something
you would ordinarily listen to,
more for stretching out upon, it invites

a lying down
laziness, indulgence

promises less than it delivers

more a vice than a voice
or just the ‘o’ when all else falls away

a paressence, the opposite of work, ton diable

Image-oblomovement

a voice whose element would be ease,
were it not for the tremor within

barometer of time’s
purer pressure

Baby you’re torturing me

a voice in bed, allongée,

or satin-draped on a sofa
like the maid in Monteiro’s Va e Vem

while he scrubbed the floor
 

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;

For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

And she and the band holed up somewhere
in the desperate hours

dans les répétitions

planning their getaway

a voice on the run
they should cover « shadowplay »

to the centre of the city where all roads meet
waiting for you

 

joy’s division

the voice put to work in the drag of time
or filling the interval,

taking a drag of her voice between times

she keeps losing her place
in the time signature
it’s not her nature

voice in fugue
from a face that reels in shadows

hard work
the graveyard shift

ghosts don’t come lightly

 

GT

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