* * * * * * * * * * * A BOOK OF HOURS by CHARLES ALEXANDER * * * * * * * * * * * FOREWORD / QUESTIONS OF HOURS "Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing." Gertrude Stein, "Composition as Explanation" What is an Hour? Say an hour is sixty minutes, but that is a division not a definition what is an hour? An hour is a period of time and how one fills it. One fills it. An hour is what we say it is. It is. Let the hours come. Let the hours be filled. Let the hours come again. * MATINS / MIDNIGHT DIALOGUE "It was part of it before. And now. There is little more. There is a little more. And so there is more than before. Water comes before butter." "One thoroughly two thoroughly three throughly three thoroughly. Three is after all. They were there after all." Gertrude Stein, *How to Write* We anticipate the birth of a child. *Water is before.* The subsequent appearance of children has successfully been predicted. Force of love love of force. One gives one takes away. Love forces love permits anything to give way to occur. Force loves nothing impropriety loves propriety. Green meadows occupy one's attention and one's bare feet. Love is before one can not live without it. Don't force me, please. Eat your Brussels sprouts. Commands victimize by force imperatives love kind requests. The face of the moon resembles Chagall's horse. It is midnight we consider midnight the birth of a child. He sent his word, and healed them. And what is knowing, asked the faithful? Beware not the water. They began a farm with six used ewes. Each night, at midnight, look to the moon. Love encompases all forces. * PRAISING THE AIR / DIALOGOS FIRST ATTEMPT TOWARD LAUD " to dream takes no effort to think is easy to act is more difficult but for a man to act after he has taken thought, this! is the most difficult thing of all' Charles Olson, *The Praises* have faith fifth later the intervals not diminished make load stones disappear and rise to act after taking thought, the difficulties stand and wait do not praise me wait third notes struck oppose that sound not full no nothing that way comes turn the face upside up not down the door opens out from paradise crawls at midnight or six morning I awakes and takes shape time thinking it all up again raises milk and toast act fruit sing bread forsake nothing find color * PRIME / THE FIRST AGE "Surprised by his use of words, the moral presence swelled to veracity plunging the social salad into the contemporary fork." "Though though and though." Carla Harryman, *Property* Surprise, the first is not the first, the last, it continues, first, and we dine sumptuously. I have rented a room with champagne and berries, a pool nearby, children within audible distance. Each act of love is renewal and renovation; to renovate a species renew fives; we desire to desire. As pleasing as pancakes in the morning, if you please, you please me oh so well, may I please you? Though night be calm, though days be long, though pleasure includes a horse with corral with unfastened gate. She stays, and so do you, and so do I. Change the music tomorrow we can travel anywhere. * SEXT / SECTION AND WHOLE "It is an old religion that put us in our places" "Behind God's eyes There might Be other lights" Mina Loy, *The Last Lunar Baedeker* Everything. To say it this way makes of everything a lump. A lump is difficult to get round. A lump is not very interesting. May we divide it into sections? We may, a child even may do so. The one for whom we are waiting? Any one will do. One of these. One of those. We have thus divided the whole into sections. We have thus divided the day into hours. Perhaps twenty-four, the clock. Perhaps eight, canonical. Sections and sections. We divide prayer into sections, the alternative is a lump of prayer, an entire act of living that is a prayer. Here we return to the whole. It is not a lump. It is very interesting. A fullness of living as a prayer. To divide is to make something less. This we think about while the sun reaches its mid-point in the sky. It is noon, mid-day. The heat makes me dizzy. * NONES / SOMETHING *MOVES* "Men and women of thought and study are voluptuaries." "And advocate pantheism if you want to." Lyn Hejinian, *The Guard* There are paintings that are not of this world and there are paintings that are of this world and which are more interesting? Of course paintings that are of this world are more, the spirit resides in the materials in which. And so. Yes, so, to go from here to there or there to here. Through through and through. There are children for whom we are waiting and children who are here and which are more interesting, of course children who are here. There are apples hanging from the tree and we can touch them. I am busy making definitions when I do not know the boundaries. The nation diverts monies from arrns sales to support counter-revolutionary soldiers. Something must be done. Speak in different tongues. Wait for nothing and anticipate anything. Desire to desire. But if I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, if I have all faith, can remove mountains, and do not have charity, I am nothing; having nothing, I possess all things. If I can see the green streak across the sky it is only a beginning, but a beginning that begins in this world and continues one two three. And some. Everything moves thoroughly moves. * VESPERS / SPEAKING IN TONGUES "Is it possible to keep open the heterogeneous and contradictory moment ... into the objective process of contemporary science, technology, and social relations." Julia Kristeva, *Revolution in Poetic Language* And vespers whispers, westering the silent moment of imperfect noise, everything is silent and everything has noise, we are imperfect and perfect beings, repeating everything. The context is at stake. That we can change. A beginning is to speak it and speak ourselves differently in many tongues. Tongues speak tongue twisters turn us one thoroughly two thoroughly three after all and a child. And four, four things: the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, the way of a woman with a man with a woman with a woman with a man with a man. Something touches each with each, she whispers, in the evening westering. Westering a language, the way that particular sunset vibrates in colors moving from red to blue, nothing staying the same, differences holding conjunctions for enduring moments. Contradictory moments are what we endure we settle in in the evening, say our prayers, prayers praise with the sound of the trumpet with the psaltery and harp with the timbrel and dance with stringed instruments and organs with the loud cyinbals with the high sounding cymbals with everything that breathes and everything that does not. And with no sound but the movement of air; push it forward slighdy with a whisper, vesper. Truly that setting light is sweet, and comes again. * COMPLINS INCOMPLETE "We eat together, that is the universal law." "Pleasure once found, the subject knows no rest until he can repeat it." Roland Barthes, "An Idea of Research" and "Reading Brillat-Savarin" Is there a difference between reserve and reverse? Enter everything wholeheartedly. A sentence is that with a whole heart. The hole art partakes of nothingness. There never is a place to end and never was. A cycle is that which is always repeating itself a bicycle is that which is always repeating itself twice a tricycle is that which can be musically represented by thirds repeating themselves. Thunderous thirds were coming in by the hundreds. The herd wishes to settle down for the night, bring water. They have been waiting for the appearance of a child when there are children all about them waiting. There never was a place to end and never is. * * * * * * * * * * * Copyright (C) 1990 by Charles Alexander. From HOPEFUL BUILDINGS, Chax Press. Print copies of the book, HOPEFUL BUILDINGS, are available in the Chax Press section [# 27] of the Grist Bookstore.