from The Face

XXVI
I suppose retrieval from afar is best. Long distance, picking up
My messages -- & loving the futility of the act -- with no intention at all
Of responding to any. From “afar.” Always the best way to retrieve anything
Already past. Among all of the pointless questions, the simple
Or impossible requests, out of nowhere, really . . . music. No voice, no “message.”
No complaint, no demand. Nothing at all except the sound of the receiver
Being placed on the piano’s top, as the player him-or-herself waits silently
Just a moment, & then begins. A lovely, moody, & even serene piece --
Something, in my ignorance, I fail to recognize, though I know
I’m meant to know it. Then the music pauses, the notes
Assembling, collapsing, re-uniting as the piece slowly grows,
Progressing in its gorgeous ascension! Then, those last few notes
Held longer than my breath. Then the silence. The dark dial tone . . .

XL
It may be time to abandon my essay on “The Cinematography of the Soul.”
Instead, it will become a poem, an ars poetica, this very page you’re holding
In the light falling from the window by your bed, the one opening
Upon your garden, the light passing through the tiny frames & onto the page,
Illuminating these lines, of a poem, of a face, the face lit by those steady
Syllables & sound, the music of the mind as pure as the light casting
These shadows, who have become the figures of these scenes, these tableaux
Set in motion by the movement of the light, of the mind, as the shadows
In their masks turn slowly to face you, each soul worn without, like the lines
Of the mask of the soul, as worn as the lines of this poem, which is yet such
A postscript to circumstance . . . it seems one must fall through the window, of
The frame, into that pane of light shifting along the bedroom floor, as even
The page you hold unfolds, lit by the fluent confetti of the soul continuing, a self
Assembled like the mosaic of a mask, the whole of that self assembled of light,
Pieces of light tossed like coins into the film of a fountain, this fountain of light
Moving along the floor & the wall. The window frame. A page. An empty page.

—David St. John

David St. John's The Face: A Novella in Verse will appear in the spring of 2004. He teaches in the English department at the University of Southern California.