Nocturne with a Line from Porchia
Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.
This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.
O at the Edges 
Robert, I am a fan of everything from nothing. Love it, excellent piece of work! Jordan
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Thanks very much, Jordan. So pleased you feel that way!
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Love this one, Bob — again.
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Thanks, Cate. It’s kind of like Groundhog Day…
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Before and after are not all that fixed in relationship … a lot keeps circulating! Which does not negate your poem’s stance in the least.
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It certainly seems that way in my world! 🙂
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I like the way you split the word ‘before’ over two lines. Never heard of Porchia; I shall have to seek him out.
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Thank you. I had to break it there to fit the sonnet’s rhyme scheme. 🙂 I really like Merwin’s version of Porchia’s book.
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It has some pleasing side-effects – the emphasis on the fore/found alliteration, avoidance of ‘before’ at the beginning of consecutive lines, a disappearing word following the word disappear (and what a prefix to be left dangling!). Really neat.
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Oh, the unplanned benefits of working within a form!
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Another gem. I can’t pick a favorite line in this one. (K)
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Thanks, Kerfe. Porchia turns me upside down sometimes…
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