Pain Without Suffering

Dan Rosenberg

 

for Tomaz Salamun

I.

The belt of wet sand swallows,

reflects my feet. With no step

do I feel consumed by landscape.

Not quite morning and the beach dogs

 

gambol. Red air moves through

their bellows. Red light solves the beach

at sunrise. The tower fades blue from distance

I’m not covering, and I can’t translate

 

the seagulls; under their distress or joy

the blanket of departing sun is red.

 

II.

One motley dog digs a crab from his hole,

halves him to the gum-line,

shakes flecks of shell across the beach.

 

From her teeth, sand trails a downward arc.

Twitch. Another  twitch.

The big claw spasms like a hand

but is no hand. Shorn into meat.

 

Blood red at the dog teeth roots.

Everything its most basic self,

the possessor, the possessed,

and me, animal

 

                             of leisure, turned around and around,

turning red here on the edge.

Dan's Notes:

12/29/14: This is the final version. I’d been coming back to this poem, on and off, for years without knowing where its heart was. Then, a couple of days ago, Tomaz Salamun passed away. He is one of the poets I admire most, as a poet and as a citizen of the world of poetry, and over the years he became a friend and mentor as well. After learning of his death, I turned back to this poem. Perhaps the reason I couldn’t find the heart of this poem for so long was that it was a poem whose heart hadn’t happened yet.

previous draft, early 2014

I.

The belt of wet sand swallows,

reflects my feet. With no step

do I feel consumed by landscape.

Not quite morning and the beach dogs

 

gambol. Red moves through

their bellows. Red solves the beach

at sunrise. The tower is blue from distance

I’m not covering, and  I can’t translate

 

the seagulls; under their distress or joy

the blanket of the very sun is red.

 

II.

 

One motley dog digs a crab from his nest,

halves it to the gum-line,

broken, shakes it across the beach,

 

sand trailing its downward arc.

Twitch a couple twitches.

Claw spasms like a hand

but is no hand. Shorn into disrepair.

 

Blood red at the dog teeth roots.

Everything its most basic self,

the possessor, the possessed.

And me, not of this game, animal

 

of leisure, turned around and around

                             and red only on the edge.

Dan's Notes: 

I cut away the chaff at last, but the poem was still haunted by the ghosts of its earlier drafts – the disrepair, the unlocated reds. The concept of the poem had not yet been fully overwritten by the presence of the poem itself. I knew I’d made progress, but I also knew that I’d hit an impasse, so I put the poem away again.

previous draft, sometime in 2013

I.

The belt of wet sand swallows,

reflects my feet. With each step

 

I don’t feel consumed by landscape.

Not quite morning and the beach dogs

 

gambol. Red moves through

their bellows. I can’t translate

 

the seagulls; under their distress

or joy the blanket of the very sun is red.

 

II.

One motley dog digs

a crab from his nest,

halves it to the gum-line,

broken, shakes it to the beach,

 

sand trailing its downward arc.

Twitch a couple twitches.

Claw spasms like a hand

but is no hand. Shorn into disrepair.

 

Blood red at the dog teeth roots.

Everything its most basic self,

the possessor, the possessed.

And me, not of this game, animal

 

of leisure, turned around

and red on the edge.

 

III.

Red solves the beach at sunrise.

The tower is blue from distance

I’m not covering. My head is not

impregnated by the sun; this straw

 

hat stiff with seawater. Red grows

wider under, stretching under the brim

to the curved earth’s visible ends.

And I see now we all accrete

 

our covers, secret

the tender underbelly. Participate

in the imbecile design. Nestled

in sand the crabs aren’t lonely

 

just alone, shelled sufficiently

grey and brown and green, and food

washes over them, and the indistinct

      red scrabble of paws above.

Dan's Notes:

Still too concerned with knowing, still in disarray, but at least I understood that it needed to be in sections. And I got rid of the title ‘Retronym’, perhaps after reading David Foster Wallace’s wonderful “Consider the Lobster” and feeling that some of the concerns in that essay were at play in this poem, or should be.

 

previous draft, 1.19.12 // Retronym

The skin is red. And under,

a red ghost tumbles into me.

A loose agglomeration of red

inside the cage does its intricate dance

and I keep on growing,

    shorn into disrepair,

red animal of leisure.

 

The belt of wet sand swallows,

reflects my feet. Not quite

morning and the beach dogs

gambol. Red moves through

their bellows, the blanket

of the very sun is red.

 

One dog digs

a crab from his bubbling home,

halves it to the gum-line,

shakes it to the beach.

    Twitch a couple twitches.

Claw spasms mimic suffering.

 

One dog herds me

wherever I go. Guide, know

the beach and know

I’m not of it, burnt parasite

turned around and red on the edge.

 

Red solves the beach.

The tower is blue from distance

I’m not covering, nor is my head

impregnated by the sun

because of this floppy hat

of seaweed. Red grows wider,

stretching to the curved earth’s

visible ends.

 

And I see now we all accrete

appropriate covers, a kind of

imbecile design under red,

like under the sand crabs aren’t

lonely just alone, doesn’t that

sound nice – to be shelled

sufficiently grey and brown

and green, and food

washes over you, and the unterrifying red

                                  thump of paws above.

Dan's Notes: 

A retronym is a new name you have to give to an old thing when a new thing changes it. Like, The Great War became WWI when we had WWII. This is a first draft so I’m struggling with my impulse to be clever, to pretend the world makes sense to me. It’s embarrassing.

Dan Rosenberg is the author of The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press, 2012) and cadabra (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2015). He has also written two chapbooks, A Thread of Hands (Tilt Press, 2010) and Thigh's Hollow (Omnidawn, forthcoming 2015), and he co-translated Miklavž Komelj's Hippodrome (Zephyr Press, forthcoming 2015). His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. Rosenberg earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. from The University of Georgia. He teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College and co-edits Transom.