| THE MEGAPHONES OF PRAGUE (1996-) texts by louis armand IPHIGENEIA (from seances, 1998) I linoleum swells in the late fluorescence commingling threads of veiled domesticity--blood secretly mourned, spilt from vestries of broken crockery ... the darkeyed priests have departed have arranged her body in its bridal lacerations already she is the dead of troy of gallipoli dresden Pompeii-- whole iliads grow from her womb efface themselves (she is waiting--for something ineffable to absolve her of history) II in her eyes, the world observed its desolation an ashtin a fluttering scrap of newspaper a row of tenement houses bristling with stubs of blackened masonry ... (at the end of the street a frantic mother holds her dead child whose head is hanging down in her arms above her, a line of washing still hangs across a narrow balcony): during this endless night it is only the locations that change III she is dying because of what she cannot remember, because of memory anonymous ... her eyes ... shadowed & dark ... at once look out to us ... & away from us ... look downward at her nude body ... & away ... look inward ... & off into space ... as though from shame ... as though she wanted to avoid the very fact of herself ... (in the museum photograph she is a girl just before womanhood--she has no breasts no pubic hair--her hands clasped & raised to cover her mouth--her soundless screams) IV someone spoke & said a crowd had gathered in the square to read the death-lists ... reminding her of an appletree standing alone among the ruins of a churchyard--its branches stuck in at crude marionette angles--& leaves left to dance or fall unhindered, like ash from crematorium chimneys ... & she cried out: the war will never end (her hands rushing up to her throat in a medici venus gesture) V (i.m. Gwen Harwood) --seized by the dark harmonies & lost again & seized: she has begun to sing-- the words are strange though perhaps not words foreign & hollowed-out trying to say something that cannot be said ... an act describes what is now dreamt: she becomes the ple�ades / & when the mirrors flee everything is backwards / � louis armand, 1998 |
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