Deserving of a kiss
And strong convulsions catapult them into the air
Whenever the Cartesian diver wraps
Around them
Measuring tape stained with flyspeck resembling a narrow bandage
That he bends over
Like over a small harmonica
With broken reeds
As if concealing a series of invisible clues
To a great crime
Committed
By an awl
On a plaster
Cast
Suffused with a balsamic aroma
Covered with a mourning veil
The sacrilegious digits
Of the Cartesian diver’s fingers
Stained
With the red dusk
Of the eternal lamp
Far to the west
Barricaded
With sealed barrels
Of rhubarb
From a fenced desert
As if they are performing
Last rites
For an unsuspecting victim
Chosen
For this sunset
They touch
The foot
Shaped like the curves of a sleeping girl
And grasp the whole of this tiny body
As if squeezing a throat
Incapable of crying out
During this work
The prolonged chiming of the clock
For company
And barking dogs
Forming a pack
Above the quarry from which evening emerges
Executed
With frantic haste
Showing
That the Cartesian diver fears being startled
By one of the three creatures monotonously shifting a heavy blanket
In the depths of the bed
The five-toed phantom’s heel transforms
Into the slightly protruding chin of the words I love you
Spellbound between two ankles
Before the Cartesian diver grasps
These two anatomical nuts
That are
Apart from his body
And yet
Play the role
Of that part of the Cartesian diver’s core
That makes him
A furious and tender being
Before he clasps these two slightly pregnant ankles
Modeled
In the style
Of two abnormally situated
Miniature breasts
Or like the tonsils
Of a singer
Throttled
By a hairy noose
He runs his fingers several times
Over the beautifully shaped cylinder of the calf
Which is
By itself
The ideal Venus
Perfectly sexless
And naked
But also
A convulsively taut muscle
Whose spasms hasten ecstasy
Or maybe even
A bulbous creature
Living on its own in a trap the shape of a small shoe
But this calf
Shaped by the sun’s rays
Fading in the rhubarb
And reflecting
In the cobbler’s workshop
Off two pumpkins
From the vegetable garden
At the moment
The Cartesian diver bent down
For the awl
Instantly left
The Cartesian diver captivated
By the enthralling image
Of the rumpled blanket
Forming in the light
Three very textured figures
Of old women in an embrace
Mouths ajar
Smirking
So provocatively
It was imperative
To counterbalance this atrocious scene
By grasping the ideal calf
And inadvertently revealing the Cartesian diver’s fetishism
The moment
The ideal leg
Vanished
At the same time
As the three old embracing women
The Cartesian diver lifted
The awl
From the floor
And sat down
So the bootjack
Between the open door
Of the workshop
And the hallway
Having played the crab
Became
A cat
Ready to pounce
On the mouse
Formed by small round flecks of light
Several loosely arranged shoes
Took on
The form of traps
Entered by
The magnificent white phantoms
Of ideal legs
And these ideal legs
Caught in the traps
Changed
The Cartesian diver’s entire character
To such an extent
The cobbler
Spasmodically clutching
The awl
Aimed at the bed
And stained
With the bloody gleams
Of sunset
Dispersed across the floor
In the form of bloody footprints
From bare feet
Became
A perfectly equipped waxwork
Murderer
Of his lady customers
With the most ideally modeled leg
Vanishing
Without a trace
In such a way
That no suspicion could arise
That the damson flowers of the wallpaper
Had something to do
With the shape of the hand
That gropes
Along the walls
To grab hold
Of the surface
Before sliding off
Like a dishcloth
Torn by the wind
Off the head
Of a stove
Emitting a terrible blaze
The moment
It was unclear
Where the Cartesian diver
Would stab
The pinkish point
Of his murder weapon
Evening
Rushed in
And so the evening star
Like a curious eye
Pressed against the window
Absorbed the point
Of a great swing of the awl
The evening star
A gouged-out eye
Milking
In the stable
Where swallows land
On a long pole
Resembling a skewer
In that smokehouse of flies
And burnt patties
Covering
Like Turkish carpets
The floor indistinguishable from gypsy camps
An object
Hangs
Looking like a breathing stalactite
With five protrusions
That
Are wrung in turn
By the hands
Of a strapping prostitute
Her womb the shape
Of a pail
Brutally prolapsed
Between two massive thighs
Spastically splayed
Awaiting
The sweet white waterfall
The strapping prostitute
With her gaze shamelessly fixed
Down
There
Into
The opening
Enclosed by a large tin diaphragm
A throat tapering
A skin of milk
At its bottom
With the phenomenal skill of a cynical courtesan
Milks
While her buttocks
Rest on a stool with a small elliptic slit
Writhing and jerking
In a monotonous rhythm that hastens pleasu
re
The glove
Hovering above the ground
With fingers
That swell
To deflate
Suddenly
Under the great pressure
Of thumb
And middle finger
Of the strapping prostitute
Is beautiful
Like a handshake
Like a thrown glove
Signaling a duel
But also like an attack of five old man’s fingers
On the defiant confusion of the infant
A child’s small drum
Covering
Its lap
The illusory
Consists in the fact
That the milk pail
Is also a tin diaphragm
And a hymen
Alters the character of the strapping prostitute
So that
While remaining true to herself
She epitomizes the complete self-control of lust
Of a virtuous woman
Sitting on a stool with a small elliptic slit
On which fall frothy hot streams of sweet milk
This act
Fanatically performed
By this member of the female sex
With her face
Hidden
Behind the large cow’s udder
Allows
For several
Different interpretations
Simultaneously
But also
As the expression
Of the maternal instinct
Of a woman with large breasts
Longing
To transform into an ewer
Pouring a beam of light
Over children
Like in those familiar portraits of female saints
With pierced hearts
Or into a jug
That would cast light
Resembling cosmic dust onto the faces of men
And
Into two milky lanterns
That baffle errant night birds with lust in their veins
Trained flies
Buzz in
To plunge
Their
Toothbrush-like probosces
Into the white viscid drops
On the gigantic udder
Covered
In scabs like crusted sores
A work-worn hand
Resembling a currycomb
Mercilessly tears off
Charred swallows
Leave their skewer
To bathe
In the milky light
That trickles
Like a funnel
Between the gigantic udder
And the glittering tin vessel
In the lap
Of the servant girl
Who milks
And sings
A sweet and innocent song of love
The Blacksmith
In the ruins
Of rust-covered bicycle
Wheels
And horseshoes
That form
A barricade
Abandoned by communards
Changed into a chicken dump
At the end
Of a corner overgrown by houseleeks
A massive hammer
Pounded by
A grandiose spread-legged man
Lashed by gunpowder
Falls upon the roofs
Where a pillar of sparks
And a lone stork’s
Wings
Wave hello
He thrusts his fist into the air
Blazing heat on his brow
While his flying shock of hair
Represents a fading inferno
Avenger
Who knows no rest
Devoted
To his menacing idyllic vengeance
With the irresponsibility of a madman
Drunk
From a flask floating in a pail
Attacks a church
Wearing a helmet
And forges
A red-hot iron
Rod
Looking like an enormous mace
Peals of thunder
Play tag
With the echoing massacre
Breaking everything into splinters
In the spaces of knocked-out windows
Behind which
Is emptiness
Just like in wells
Where a hundred-fold shadow
Is cast by fists
Persistently hammering
On the doors
Of barns and granaries
That are locked
That terrible fist swings the bell
The blasphemer
Is boxing
Hell-bent on knocking out the eye of heaven
That cynically floods desolate white-washed houses
With radial light
With an iron resolution to act
While the knuckles crack
This fist delivers bruises shaped like swallow nests to roofs
In the name of vengeance
The hammer
Imperiously sailing through the air
Takes the form
Of gallows
Affixed to the wall
Deep in gardens
Gallows
Where the otherworldly shadows
Of uprooted trees
With tops fluttering wildly
Sway
From the brow
Of the superhuman worshipper
Of disruption
Who utterly absorbed in his hysteria
Demolishes
The remnants
Of human endeavor
Abandoned
By every living soul
Drops of sweat fall
The size of small onions
Whose roots
Greedily latch onto
The girders of rubber
Full
Of ulcerous crusts
Shaped like poisonous toadstools
This monstrous seed
Of toil devoted to disruption
These bulbous little tubers
Harbor a portent
Of future
Big hairy heads
Of the generation
That will
Grow up above the ruins
To replace
The rotting
And decaying
Like old fallen apples
Scalped heads
Above whose nothingness hovers the glorious hammer
The bending and straightening
Of the revolutionary blacksmith’s
Back
Forms
On the horizon above roof tiles
A mountain range
Full of valleys
A mountain range
With a ridge
The massive spine
Whose vertebrae form
Sculptures like fetishes
The shape
Of healthy
Enamel-coated
Molars
Bared hungrily
At the sky that gingerly furls its gray banner
The extended arm
Of the hoodlum with a hammer
When his muscles
At the height of tension
Are completely taut
Creates the distinct outline
Of a woman’s body
Lifted by an insolent lover
Above the whole desolate region
Of the foremother
Of future humankind
Of a rather frightened
And trembling
Like a revived mummy
Maenad
Of tomorrow
Ashamed
Of her still undeveloped thighs
Created
To be a triumphal arch
Of coming
Nations readying a new golden age
This nymphomaniac
With atrophied
eyes
And full-blown hair
The next giantess
Is crowned
By a hammer scepter
And sends her regards
To the eagles
Beyond the base
Of the mountain ridge
That bows before her
The dirty foremother
Of future giants
Modeled
From the arm
Muscles
Of the destroyer
Of the declining
And gentle
Epochs
Buried under onions
Plunges
Headfirst
Into the bucket
To try out
Her swimming skills
Which consist
Of the rhythmic motion of her earlobes
The remains
Of vestigial fins
Of primordial fish
Water sloshing
In the form
Of golden piggies
Lends
Tiles on crumbling roofs
The appearance
Of huge front teeth
Of a future appetite
Bared
At the ridged back
Of a deer
And these tiles
Revived by the sloshing water
From the bucket
Where the monstrous blacksmith immersed his swollen right hand
Simultaneously become
An enormous dulcimer
That receives
The hammer of the manic player of a dissonant revolutionary anthem
This anthem
No longer sung
But tapped out
By the savage blows
Dished out by vengeance
Demolishes
The church roof
Held together by gilding
Attached with rot
This anthem
Makes the prison
A leaky chimney
That releases
A writhing
Demon turned into the stench of sulfur
This anthem
Clears out
Musty bedrooms
A storeroom
For gold accumulated by entire generations
Changing
In the wind
Into dry leaves
This anthem
Severs
Chains
That
Dangle
Like a sack of wind
A swaying abstract ideal
This anthem
Forged by a sledgehammer
On the dulcimer
Of uniformly constructed buildings
In the throes of a deluged village
Echoes deeply
In the wells
And the well-laid foundation of this sandy soil
That has never experienced an earthquake
While the merciless pulverizer
Of everything
Time has eroded
Delivers crushing blows
To empty conceited ovoid skulls
Whose cracking skin
Is watered by red dusk
While a steel udder
Swinging
In a cracked tower
The Absolute Gravedigger Page 3
