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.