Free Gossamurmur by Anne Waldman

in this terrible way
”
    “
it is not the Deciding-Way
”
    Original Anne stormed in and demanded retrieval of her memory stream
    she charged in and reclaimed the essence of Archive
    she had wrested Archive from the master-plan of the Deciders
    she would not close her visions to the difficulties in North Africa
    she would keep on the study of language and culture
    but she had to let go of anything that did not tally with political reality “on the ground”
    she did not compromise her involvement with crimes of terror and radical religious fervor
    her name and the names of the subversive classes she taught were removed from the lists of the lackeys of the Deciders
    she felt keenly the disinheritance of her institution which appeared now as a russet castle inhabited by enemies of poetry and imagination inhabited by the pervertors of the teaching, con artists who
    preyed on the ignorance of tender supplicants
    she had distance and she kept her distance in the hallways of archiveless night
    the castle evaporated or rather disappeared from one world system
    “
it’s all an illusion
”, said Decider Vishnu
    while drones with their manic evaporating sounds of danger and violence retreated into the distance, the little child deaf to the machinations of power but feeling the vibrations
    of a lighter time a future time
    Archive buried in the frozen tundra, a treasure to last a thousand years
    intonations of poets and of their fragile impermanence…
    pity the New Deciders, she said
    they will not inherit this earth
    leave that to the slime molds, the protists, those who inhabit the power of symbiosis
    pity the Deciders pity their obsessions
    pity their sick fixation with gender control
    pity the lovers and mistresses of Kaneie and Genji
    Deciders who frolic about the Shinden-zukuri mansion
    while the women write of them
    in subdued yet passionate tones
    rain on tiled roofs
    women rarely venturing beyond the veranda
    receiving gentlemen callers from behind curtains
    in their giant heaps of clothes….
    hiding a diary under a pillow stained with tears
    Archive is not a portfolio.
    This is my poem for now and future lovers, scrolled in my pillow book at dawn:
    Start from a murmur of persons and rise up not like a veil of unsanctified tears; a work in love is never unsanctified enigma if not but pure flow and consent or rip in the veil which is sanctuary for persons be they same or other. As a waterfall never falling in the same sanctuary twice. An abode for our bodies, of union, of persons stepping up to the altar of ancestors together who were union who were civil who were convivial behind a veil. Step up, step it up, convivial. Show them, and rip the veil off the eyes of the enemies of veil. See it another way. Declare the space to be an abode of bodies. See through the waterfall to those behind a veil that was protecting the face of other, same-face same-base same-trace same-pace same-grace same-lace marriage. A civil veil. Or it is my vow my vowels and vocables to be this same which is never that same one in gender-constructed eros. Eros-faced marriage. We are never the same in same-sexed love. But law is civil and protects the abode of bodies. A body abode, a body abides. Say it: law is civil or rival is civet is civilized is civilians is not chilling. Gone is the time of boundaries of veils or tears of borderlines of separating cascades of enigmas and hiddenness. Gone is that chilling time that does not witness the desire to be seen to be witness of this union. Beyond a boundary “same” or “reciprocal” or “solidarity pacts.” It is over, gone and done with, that violent time violent divide. Over, of hiding the shape of a bed, the shape of a clearing in a forest where you lie down, soft and mossy spot, and you might come together there, the ancient dark green moss and secluded spot you come to, again. Same and same and not same and sane. Decide our own bodies. You of former hiddenness and sorrow and lie down and come