Week Four - Sign Inventory - "Every Morning"

Every Morning
     -Claire Malroux, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Every morning the curtain rises
Alone, you listen to the dark dissolving
The stars slowly clicking themselves apart
The sky turns back into this breezy scarf
Shaken out by the awakened birds
You don't touch each other but you walk together
Leaning against and within each other until evening
When, alone, you chase the wild night at your gate
Sweep to weep for, like a wet stray dog
You don't want to hear the crows cry
The diminishing number of lines
To be spoken on this stage, set for how long
The shadow grows, flesh hollows itself out, another
Takes your place. Step by step you leave yourself

-Structure of the poem: Sonnet, for a poem that surface level stages the inevitability of broken relationships.

-No actual sentences denoted by punctuation until the very end--the phrase "Step by step you leave yourself" is the only one set off on its own.

-Theatrical elements: Begins with a "curtain rising," then mention of "lines" and "stage." Clearly, this means to allude to relationships with people as highly "put on" or "dramatized," but can we also look at it in conjunction with concrete imagery in this poem? Maybe the "every morning" opening, or the stray dog, crows?

-"Sweep to weep," "dark dissolving," "stars slowly," "crows cry." Poetic choices--this idea meshes well with the previously listed dramatized elements of the text.

- The contradictions in lines 6-7; They "don't touch eachother," yet they "lean against and within eachother."

(Why do so many of these forgo ending punctuation!?)