Erasure from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
EDITOR, NOW:
Freakish willingness arouses
raw quality nostalgia.
Amusement gave me the first hint.
Chronology breaks down. Born, dies,
ill, ill, removed: idiosyncratic.
Attends, joins, once again returns.
Regularizing, censoring.
Saga breaks down.
(Let me advise you, let me plot
to introduce you to explicit detail)
INTERPRETER, THEN:
Notice pleasure –
stimulus - pleasure -
show each other what we wrote.
Ambiguous, Christian, women;
the weapon. Not true praise: hard work.
Zest obtruded. Hard refusal.
Querulous sympathies
touched the wall.
Prepare our minds:
(Preface this; Notice that;)
What more shall I unbend?
Demon life – Afreet –
If the result be attractive?
Blooming close.
Who is coward now?
ERASURE, TO THE LETTER:
The colours of the rainbow resemble
their tongues. Black eyes; blue
conversation Throttler.
Execute intention,
tarnish and dust.
Doleful intervals. Direct me
to self-respect. Obey your lock,
your bolt; omit the look
double-edged spring knife!
That great tempter, to
Thwart, Kill, Fight,
Love: Instrument of Horror.
‘I’ll make the porridge’- out of habit.
I should proxy
I hate
I wretch
I shall expect
what rough beast? Not a foliage,
but flint, rock. Devil’s spies.
Arm me at the window for
zealous fevered hammering;
rappings and counter-rappings.
A shower of my blood-drops ghosts the bog.
Dark track beneath the lug-hole.
Blade thrown in, those hands,
and back again. Constrict. Release.
Weary of hanging, I’d stretch
that artery, myself,
across the restless grave;
embalm my own heart
laughing reckless as a dog.
Nerves pinched tight for the cut.
I must away.
Slit. Pain, flow. Rattle; twitch.
Summons the blot.
Out, Gimmerton bell, Out.
Run, wild hares.
I was not aware how openly I grieved.