Lisa Robertson

Wooden Houses

A work called wooden houses begins
It explores different degrees of fear.

And it is curious that you did not chose a secular image
Augustine’s own task was equally impossible.

And we said a boat would come and take you to Venice
And you are a law of language.

And my mouth took part
And we fed you morphine mixed with honey.

And you are a rare modern painting in the grand salon
And you are a wall of earth.

And you are an ideological calm
And you are flung out to search.

And you are framed only by the perspectival rigors of masonry
And you are not a neutral instrument.

And you are pornographic
And you are the imagination of society as a tree.

And you are the kneeling woman who expresses some alarm
The woman looks somewhat apprehensively at the viewer.

And you are the pronoun of love, scorn, accusation, glamour
Everything you know about the animal pertains to the riot of love.

And you are Torontos of cold trees
Where erupts the morning’s catalogue.

And you did not die outside of love
And you do not judge.

And you roll down scrabbling at its glaze
The man on the right runs away terrified.

And you see how an animal dies
Giving a first drop of voluptuousness.


And you seem to pour rose water
Leaning on trees for rest.

And you speak in leaves
To flirt and fight and appease.

And you turn into a her not knowing what’s happening
The woman in your midst may be kneeling or seated or perhaps has simply been drawn out of scale.

And you are the last wooden house
The carved frame includes the heads of dogs.

And you will not die
But chance is always a little ahead.

And your failure is my tongue
The dramatic effect is heightened by the bright red ground showing through the top layers.

And your heart broke off into this great desire to see
Into the tall grass.

And your plump arms emerge from the gold and rose-pink folds of your tunics
As in the ancient literary genres.

Because it is a known fact
The wounded fall towards the point.

Because of mute desire
You are the teak pavilion.

Because you wanted to be flattered
You are portrayed here as the sea goddess Thetis with two of her five sons.

But chance is always a little ahead
But not under circumstances of its own choosing.

Emptying your apartment during the season of apricots
This wasn’t true.

Genial then light
I tell mine complaint.

I tell mine complaint
I tell mine complaint.

I took part in the savage transaction
It burns to come back to you.

It is pure surface
It pushes straight towards the author of its hurt.

It was 3:04 am
Like you invented summer in a text I discovered in your drawer in the summer of 1998.

Or a woman whose complete being seems to sing sex
One man shows his companion.

Sometimes the most ample designations are so stifling you can only go further inside
Supposing a designation to have an interior.

The fabric is knotted to reveal your figure
The folds suggest the roundness of a young girl.

The tissue is syllables and dreams in a distant colony
The parts of life are not happening in tandem.

Then it is summer
This material is reconciled to chance, which is spacious.

To make livid a philosophy
We helped you leave breath.

Whether love comes as a young boy with girlish limbs
You are behind and between Christ and the adulteress, witnessing.

You are buckled into my truth
A young woman looks openly out of the picture.

You are the claustrophobia of the image
At its peak a couple stare at the lightning-filled sky.

You are the exhausting pace of boredom versus the use of the body
You are the next cabin also.

The figures represent the four ages of man
You call this passivity.

You left the books that had surrounded you and me holding your body
Accompanied by only the city.

You lie there wounded
You see the precision of the distant city through the round arches of the bridge.

You see the women’s thick hair bound with coloured ribbons, their complicated sandals and the sprigs of olive
You slip your cock into the actress’s vagina.

You thrum and click
You took part in the savage transaction of negation.

You are wooden houses transformed into apartments and restaurants
Your breath thrummed the wooden house.

Your failures are no longer sacred
The cabin. The music shop. The next cabin.

Lisa Robertson

Canadian writer Lisa Robertson lives in France, and currently teaches at The American University of Paris. Her books of poetry include The Apothecary, XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, and The Weather. Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for SoftArchitecture, a linked series of essays on cities, architecture and ornament was published by Clear Cut Press in Fall 2003 and a chapbook, Rousseau’s Boat, was published by Nomados in 2004.