Kevin McLellan

1 poem

THE CORRIDOR (ERASURE OF KEVIN MCLELLAN’S RENDITION OF
MAURICE BLANCHOT’S The Last Man TRANSLATED BY LYDIA DAVIS)

I.

“ an arrow
too far away…”
in the eyes.

a room, whose lighted window

My room

no memory of himself.

his limit
fragmented


yet I was struck

less fixed,

the corridor
a white light, footsteps

folded back

Because of him, I was
almost too large.
two shadows

he


a shadow


already a little snow,

All the doors
white as the wall

that corridor.

in that tunnel. the door,

II.

And yet,
a slope, a height

pushed me back

“We,”
that chorus

The voice

between us

farther.
Already black,

blacker.



myself in that chorus.

These words

the little window,


with shadows.

The space

questions.
the black that dies

the large me

remembering

Maybe you
and yet I

these words
between us


in harmony with “Later, he…

 

Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear in numerous literary journals including American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Interim, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, and Witness. McLellan lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.