LOUIS ARMAND

Armand's poetry, essays, translations and short prose have appeared in various
publications, including Sulfur, Stand, TriQuarterly, Poetry Review, Meanjin,
Frank and Van Gogh’s Ear. In 1997 he was awarded the Max Harris Prize at
the Penola Festival (Adelaide) and in 2000 he received the Nassau Review Prize
(New York). His books include Séances (Prague, 1998); Erosions (Sydney, 1999);
Inexorable Weather (London, 2001); Land Partition (Melbourne, 2001); Strange
Attractors (Cambridge, 2003); Malice in Underland (Melbourne, 2003); and a
volume of prose, The Garden (Cambridge, 2001). Louis Armand is editor of the
PLR (Prague Literary Revue) and director of the Prague International Poetry
Festival. Do visit his site.

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The Divers: La Quebrada

a broken surface, in which the past
would comprise all the elements of a reflection—its
image made to render
transient sensations permanent. the narrow

chasm & wavefall like the sound of
clavadistas … the sea hands back its mirror
to the flawed & unstable nature
of a psychology in love with virtù or providence

the divers, poised on the high ledge
arms spread to receive
our invocation to flight—as one after another leans out

across that improbable divide. not to grasp
but to gain a vantage point from which to observe
their thin shadows plummeting






At The Subsistence Minimum
for joshua cohen

if the end of extinction is tomorrow’s food
a purgative or no more than point-of-view
stealing the lines from no paradise
but this one—being to rescue the body
before it dies (the objective is obviously

one of redemption). & so i returned
to the mountain under 42nd street to find
the one-within-the-one, identity withheld
for purposes of anonymity—a megalith
of insomnia filling in the glassed dark &

populating it (we talk about their births
& how there were always thunderstorms &
once an earthquake. it’s true, though, that i
wasn’t dead): not yet reduced to the grim
inner workings of a logic of detail

the addresses here aren’t labelled—there are
vacant lots filled with rubble, these
are the present conditions for further
thought. drunk i shouted in my language
lost to the humanity of those streets, our

biography as collective as it is almost non-
existent—what i am today what you
are now today, x-ray bodies laid out in
newsprint austerity: a thick tongue hanging
low out of a mouth, eyes scanning

front page headlines for permission to
give in. list symptoms: one plastic cup (white)
one telephone (burgundy) other miscellaneous—
dreaming of shop-window athletes in
seamless bondage or flight? between now

& the release date there are countless
vending machines, self service mission
statements readymade for the last ditch run
out of the big picture. somewhere the change
is being counted & has almost been added up






Composition
for john gamble

cityscapes in rain or hail—move often—
the very idea of a bridge

alphabetical fire escapes
as lattice points on the rectilinear surfaces

of harlem tenements—or downward-
spiralling stairways

reflected in a wet sidewalk
& sky as labyrinth of flight-lines—

no longer paraphrasable meaning
but urge to outer (space?)

of the infinite interior—taking a brooklyn-
bound a-train as far as beyond—

stare at the atlantic for a while
imagining others on the other side

staring back—erosion
gradually of everything to sand swept

back & forth across the ocean floor, even—
the smog-mute leviathan of dusk

presages entropy—switch channels & it’s
night again then day no point

debating with the obvious—knowing
its time is always now

though still a chance of missing
the last connection & the last turning back






The Living Part

no one can speak for this. the morning
after the pleading & evidence
& the ghost supposedly laid to rest—
a lid draws down over the supervising eye
lulled by the amourousness of accusation.
the unenjoyed fruits of a constant labour
whose thoughts are stolen thoughts, steeled
& honed to murderousness. what you
did not know you chose not to know

the shadow under its slipped mask—or a
furnished room with soiled bed sheets &
plastic bouquet. framed against that
chiaroscuro of yellowed wallpaper &
nicotine stains, ambiguous forms accuse
& are accused in turn—an ungainly light
shaking over them, guided by senile force.
its witness is as insubstantial as air—
unbalanced by the weight of self-blame

that having once been born we must again
be praised or punished for it? for love of
humility or of humiliation, or some other,
inadmissible idea—the failed realism of a
nativity scene in which the miraculous &
inexplicable play no part. only the
accidental effect of the portraitist’s touch
rendering those lives in all their facelessness.
that we may see in them who we wish to see

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