3/4/2023 0 Comments No angel joanna angel torrentThe secondary past tense (“as once I’d climbed through cloud forest”) which functions as the ‘normal’ past tense: this is the level of ‘memory’ to the previous tense’s ‘present’.The initial past tense (“when Gran fell downstairs”) which can be considered functionally as the present tense, since the poem as a whole is framed within this context.(A third strand – which makes up the entirety of the third stanza – is almost an aside, relating how, after Jimmy Angel died, his wife scattered his ashes at the top of the falls he’d discovered.) The whole poem is written in modulations of the past tense, and it is that which helps to disguise the complexity of levels of memory. There are two main threads – the death of the poet’s grandmother as a result of falling down stairs, and the poet’s memory of visiting Angel Falls in Venezuela. Pascale Petit’s “Mirador” is ostensibly a simple poem. The air I wanted to collect in boxes and label,Īs I’d scooped the red soil at the foot of the fallsįor proof of my visit, it was as if I was underwater,Īll my childhood in her house falling on my head,Īgainst my eyes, down my mouth, all the water and fire of my life. The base so strewn with rocks I could not see the plunge-pool.īut when I went and stood in Gran’s hall, looking upĪt the air that contained aftershocks and echoes, In sandstone where marrow has carved passages, Nine hundred metres to fall from the summit.īone and water, bone and air, the corridors the ninety years of her life gathered forcesĪgainst the torrent that battered the panes. So he could watch dawn turn the plummeting waters to fire.Īll night Gran was restless as rockets explodedĪnd fireworks lit up her uncurtained windows.īy four a.m. Then Laime the hermit built his hut on Rat Island To throw his ashes, spray burning her face. Had a bush pilot fly her right up to the headĪnd against the winds she opened the cockpit window I thought of Jimmy Angel, discoverer of these falls, I saw how water after it has fallen so far When I reached the lookout point where the whole cataractĬan be viewed, sweat in my eyes and needle-fine spray,ĭark clouds obscured the head of the falls.įor about a third of a mile up the amphitheatre Over the tangle of roots on my way to seeĪngel Falls from the mirador of Alexander Laime. I climbed carefully as once I’d climbed through cloud forest Stand on top of the stairs and at the bottomĪnd on each step between her life and death. When Gran fell downstairs and died I wanted to visit her house,
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