THE COLD

An extirpation is her way to marvel
Doubt's tremour

& names us
(its valve)

a small beauty does perfectly endure
in memory

without regard to hope or fear
this treed company

a figure

almost (opening a Valdepnal window, seamless
also a door

Whose aureole glistened, after?
Whose laid down an arm, so gladly?
Whose surprise incorporated?
Whose clavicle held a soft murmur outward?
Whose sternum was alabaster in relief?
Whose sun warmed it, such a sternum, in such, "in such" a key?

Who said "such" as if the heteroclitic band would glisten?
Whose head "spun"?

Who traced that aureole with a lip or femur?
Whose turned back?

(Here we are talking about the voice, a simulacrum of the cuerpo.  Who
dressed "consequence" in such gaudy shoes?  Whose blessing was
obvious, a limen?  The word "cuerpo" is already the repository of such
a distance, & bears the topological trope of rhetoric.  Where we were
going in the narration.  The body admits to this, a kind of precocious
tear or tear, a narrational knot it feeds.  & if Lyotard says he will
speak no more of "surfaces of inscription", it will be necessary to
undo his interdiction.  The surface of inscription not a place but a
danger.  A line is foraged there.  Abrasion hears us where a line is.)

Whose aureole?

(An inscription insists, insists.)

Whose mouth says "aureole"?
Whose transcription, urgent, hears what the mouth says?