memory he said believes he said
and himself did who has himself
memory and did himself believe
and then remember to recollect,
whose name was william faulkner
whose place was mississippi
and whose verb was tell.
memory he wrote believes before knowing
remembers, believes longer than recollects
longer than knowing even wonders
knows remembers believes, he himself said
believing himself and mississippi august skylight
mississippi thickets in september twilight,
believing the dry hysteria: something
is going to happen I am going to do something
something is going to happen to me
and memory no less in mississippi than elsewhere
believes knows tells this:
the mississippiness of ancient oracles
of albatross sins ancestral; recollects remembers this:
pre-summersmell of wisteria
oldentime ladies in rooms unsanctuary
amid mississippi gothic behind cottonwhite
totems doric corinthian scotch irish
(O clytemnestra my black one
O my firstborn son and brother)
and this also believes:cypress and gum trees
beach, cane and briar and three-note birdsong
reflections in branch water; mississippi distant horns
and gas engine smells fading beyond now and fury.
and this recollects and knows the significance of:
black human blood red on butcher knives
white female blood on phallic corn cobs.
memory believing yoknapatawpha indian doom
did not mistake the wilderness for sanctuary
either but wished it so as huntsman
but wishing does not know
forgets and gallops confederate cavalry in gale (tone)
hightower
sermons
wish-fulfilling knighthood (without negroes)
wish-forgiving arrogance and the outrage of human
bondage
wish-denying antebellum insurrections nightmares
while celebrating those who could survive them
but wishing is believing too
because the bones remember
(O canaan look away from dixie
away from bedford forest o railroads
underground freedom bound)
and memory knowing this
knows more (believes infers
more complications than even those
miss rosa colfield's perhaps once glittering
eyes gave quentin compson, who said:
and wants it told)!
memory
believes knows recollects in him (whose nouns
were courage and honor and pride and
he says pity and love and even justice
and liberty) believes knows and wonders at
wishing become man-horse-demon
with twenty negroes (shackled) begetting
with one french architect (shanghaied) sutpens
hundred (without gentleness begot, miss rosa
colfield says) wonders remembers
aghast but knows mississippi dynasties
of somewhat oedipal
innocence with black
queen-mothers and half brothers
knows jefferson the man and town
and public confederation of decorum; and also knows
remembers eighty miles to memphis
and miss reba's sanctum sanctorum of law and order
and sportsmanship
believes remembers
recollects, records in commissary ledgers
pharaoh-tale-accounts compounded in confounding
convolutions of all-too-human-impacted
good intentions which at any rate
reveal (or partly unconceal) himself:
william faulkner hamlet-hounded master
of mulatto metaphors among maebeths
in county court houses castles out-demographed
by ever in-creeping miscegenated thickets
nigger? the sheriff said in hot pursuit
of the inherently illusive mississippi christmas,
nigger? he said. maybe nigger, maybe not
they told him then
whose memory like theirs believed in shadows
as much as men