The aubade is a poem about lovers parting in sorrow at dawn, and it’s a form dating back to the Elizabethan era, though I suspect this universal act of separation must have been commemorated in song long before then. That’s the beauty of this lyrical movement, it is as shapeless and fluid as the untethered emotion it is meant to represent and poets have continued to re-interpret and re-imagine that moment into the twenty-first century. The following is a gorgeous rendition by Oliver de la Paz:
Aubade with a Heel of Bread, a Heart, and the Devil
After rain sputters to an end and there is nothing
but pulse—
after venous smells fill the room
like a gun firing. After steam and lullaby
of early-morning cock a doodle doo, I think
my name twenty-five times, a dulcet song
in time to the tune of the dog brushing his side
against the fence, and knows it’s the hour of naming
my ghosts. In the time it takes for the curtain
edges to define, I will mistake a heel of bread for a lung
and the Devil will dance off the knife-edge
jabbed into the crust. I will be a phantom
tattoo and the bone-rattle of ice in the trees. I will darken
and harvest, and you will know me
by the starlings and killdeer and the crow.
But for now what the hell do I know? For now
I farewell the evening. Farewell cigarette and bourbon.
Farewell my devil with your blue torch. Here I am,
the vena cava, the septum, the shunt.
The restlessness of longing and desire are so palpable here it takes on a kind of supernatural power, ushering the speaker into the throws of madness. Aren’t these the sounds that disturb our sleep at dawn—the monotonous rainfall, the rooster, the lovesickness? O to escape the flesh, it’s need for pleasure, the wicked way it inhabits pain.
I’m drawn to de la Paz’s use of diction and unexpected word choices (like “killdeer”—according to the Merriam Webster, “an American plover with a plaintive penetrating cry”—and “shunt”—according to the Merriam Webster, “a method or device for turning or thrusting aside”) that elevate the texture of the poem from beautiful to startling. And what to do with lines like “Farewell cigarette and bourbon./ Farewell my devil with your blue torch” that revel in the punch-drunk love of their own creation?
Furious Lullaby, de la Paz’s second book of poetry, contains no less than ten aubades, each a high point in this fabulous new collection by the author of the award-winning volume Names Above Houses with the same press.
(From Furious Lullaby, Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Used with the permission of the author.)
Thank you for your kind words, Rigoberto!
Posted By: Oliver de la Paz on October 24, 2007 at 11:08 amReport this comment