by Jesse Ball
He begged of her to tell him what year it would be, yet she refused. Finally, he asked, “Is fortune-telling true? Have you told me the truth? Or do lies make your fortune?” To this she replied, “It is not not-true.
And when I lie, it is because a fortune is too grim to be told, and then it itself bears the burden of the lie.”
Thus, in the spring of each year, the man laid out his best clothing, and went about as though bereaved, and each summer, he sang and spent great sums of money, as if to do so was nothing and of no consequence.
A Man Whose
sleight of hand was so fast that even the flourished points of his tricks could not be seen. He would pull coins from behind people’s ears, but the audience would see neither the hand as it hid the coin, nor the hand as it took the coin away. His art was too great. The best of his tricks, to circle the globe in less than a second, impressed no one, as he, for reasons of his own, would always end up precisely where he had been standing before. “He’s a fraud!” they chanted. And they were right, in a way. Someone else would have had to come along and teach the audience to see, before they could ever appreciate this dancing of a human hand upon a second hand.
A Gift
A heavy wooden staff is presented as a gift. In 7 of 9 possible worlds, it is a stern staff, some length of thickly carved wood, a strength to the traveler. In the 8th world, separate, it acts and speaks upon its own, casting a moving shadow, bending its long neck beneath a canopy of leaves. We may not name it there, for there it names itself. And in the 9th, that farthest of far places?
Questions of the 9th remain unanswered, for statement there is nothing but swiftness of motion.
The Carriage Driver
In the midst of a terrible storm, a carriage comes thundering down a narrow drive, and pulls up at the entrance to a large mansion. The carriage doors are thrown open and a man with a haughty, powerful bearing exits the carriage and goes to the house. Hours pass. The storm is a brutal call from an angry host, and the tree line flails upon the near hills; the mud churns, pounded by the water’s ceaseless assault. Still the carriage driver waits, trembling. He wants to rub the horses with a soft blanket, but he cannot, for the mud about their hooves is too deep now for him to stand in. In fact, the carriage has now sunk so that only half of its wheels rise out of the mud. The horses are curiously dead, slumped in their harness, unmoving. Soon the mud will cover them. Then and only then will he knock upon the house’s great door. He will not speak when the door is answered, but will simply point, dumbfounded, at the carriage as it sinks from sight.
Three Visitors
It happened that a man returned from his day’s labor to find three young women living in his house. The first was black-haired, the second yellow-haired, and the hair of the third was scarlet. They gave him different reasons for their arrival. The first said they had been drowned in a lake by their father, who could not bear their taking lovers, and this is where they had emerged.
The second said they were tinkers, and had come to fix his pots. The third said they were commissioned by a lord to find the only honest man in Christendom. The beauty of but one of these girls would have lit the rooms of his house as by some small descended sun. The presence of three was uncanny and hardly to be borne. “I think you have come to take a husband,” said the man. And the girls laughed, and it was true that one would remain. But which? Each day, the three would tell stories, and he would guess at who was lying. And always he would catch the black-haired girl, while the others could deceive him. For her lies were grand, implausible affairs, and a signal delight. The girls slept in his bed, all three, while he laid out a mat on the kitchen floor, and wrapped himself in a single woolen blanket. Each night he would hear their murmuring, as they composed the next day’s lies. Finally, he took to writing these lies down in a leather book. For one year they stayed, and when they left all three left together, in the night. And when he looked at the book he had kept, he saw that he had only ever written down the tales the black-haired girl had told. He saw also, that he had been wrong, and that some tales he had thought false, now seemed true. A book, he thought to himself, a book of lies and truths. All equally redeeming, all damning, all brought upon us by these ghosts, our selves, and where we walk, where we have walked, where we will walk yet, guided by a chorus whose nature must always be hidden.
EXCEPTED
A Measure
And therefore, simply keep a cup, dusted lightly with poison, within your cupboard. When the time comes, let your fellow pour the drink, first in your cup, then in his. Drink well and long to various healths. The health of life. The health of love. And the health of hate. By then, he will be beyond help, or health, and you may say what you like for as long as you like, as well or as poorly as you know how.
picnic in ten years’ time — 2004
~ ~ ~
composed of: BESTIARY nos. 1–17 and LATER MANUAL
If, in a crowd of thousands there is preserved one who knows me, then I go free.
1 — Bestiary nos. 1–17
~ ~ ~
The first dream in which I had the sensation of my true situation while asleep occurs in the 207th night; the second in the 214th.
Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867
It Was a Later Century
I woke in the midst of a deep sleep,
some sleep such as comes over
the entirety of the world, that lasts
an infinite and indefinite period;
that, when finished, is scarcely marked
by those who slept. Out in the world
things were quiet. I went to the house
of the girl I love. She was asleep.
I dressed her, and took her with me
over my shoulder. By the river I picked
cornflowers. It was a glorious day.
From a great distance I saw a picnic,
a party of revelers, a dog. But so far,
would we ever reach them?
My girl did not answer, but looked
lovely I may tell you, in blue cotton.
I began to cross the plain.
If the day stays still we may
yet reach the other side,
to picnic there in ten years’ time.
Arravelli’s “View of Loum,” 1542
There are three walking by the small river,
dividing the world’s belongings
into three. A hatted man in a road-stained cloak.
To the left, a miller bent upon a stick, who seems,
though crippled, to ask no help of his daughter,
she who wanders there
in the composition, the daylight rolled up
like a map against her scarlet hair.
They have been talking some time it seems
without passing beyond that row of hills
the young traveler would have crossed to come
to this crisis, to this dwelling place.
And yes, there is a mill, some four brushstrokes
delicately upon a distant withered lawn. Economy
constitutes this life: the daughter has but one
dress, that she wears; she has but one suitor,
soon to pass away; but one father, hateful,
gathering the plurals of sadness to himself;
one sadness, shared like bread; one world, beyond,
evoked once by the single traveler who has seen her
stark against foreshortened youth. For they grow old,
these wild daughters, bound to fathers
in grim lands. In them grief is a yellow tree, encircled
by a fence of bird-like angels. No shout will cause
this flock to rise to air. And here the light
is never strong enough for the face upon waking,
though it pools where the animals sleep,
and comes radiant at night through unreachable
fields, through windows which, seen with closed eyes,
confirm all dread — else
where there is a dance
that many have joined. She winces, and her one hand
is joined by the other, as if it were the painter himself, who,
painting an arm to hold the arm which looked
so hard to bear, had given himself away.
He was this traveler, Arravelli, who lied and yet did not lie,
a young man who said he would return.
The Privileged Girl Speaks
Whatever you do by the margin,
don’t touch the tree line. It’s poisonous.
Grandfather planted it sixty years ago
to keep things out. He’s the only one
it cares for. You should see
the old man take a walk. He goes along
the forest edge, whistling, “St. Pierre is Home”
and it opens like a door
into some other wooden room.
Bestiary 1
It was a gray sun that stood at the door that day
and asked me for some water. Deny the sun
a cup of water? I could not.
And let me tell you something else. If it had asked
for a bed I’d have given it a bed. If it had asked
for a roasted calf, I’d have given it a roasted calf.
Soon after it left, I felt empty. I went
back to my needlepoint — three yellow bees
trying to escape from the Archangel Gabriel.
They’d stung him rather badly
on his hands and on the loose and careless
portions of his wings.
A Set Piece
to be told at gatherings
The resignation of the sheriff left nothing to be done. The populace of that tiny hamlet poured out into the cramped streets, half-dressed and quarrelsome. Shops were broken into. Women were vigorously affronted. Men too were affronted, with equal vigor and panache. Many living near the municipal zoo were beaten by a crowd of contrary children. I taught everyone a hymn I had written, complete with musical accompaniment. It went:
Kill us if you like,
but you won’t like Hell
when you do (when you do)
come to (come to)
in the heat (in the hot)
in the hot (in the heat)
in the goddamn fire of the Lord.
I pretend now to have made it up, but actually an old woman sang it to me when I menaced her husband with my little knife. I wanted their clothing, particularly her aubergine housecoat.
But don’t be concerned for me. This sort of thing is what everyone does when everyone does it. And everyone who doesn’t does play along, or at least watches from the wings as those who do do what they do, whether well or wantonly.
In another hour, we shall burn the town to bits. I’ve always wanted to, and now we’re in cahoots. It’s a wonderful thing, being in cahoots. One can’t help but prefer it. We’ll all sit on the hill outside of town and laugh and hold hands with pretty girls and boys while pretty girls and boys laugh and hold hands with us.
And the sky will stream fitfully across the sky, its sails filled by the same wind that prompted us this morning when we rose, rosy cheeked and hamhanded from our all-too-narrow beds, filled with the same rippling restless pleasure that even now sits like a lantern in my youthful throat.
Bestiary 2
A ninety-five-year-old pilgrim is at the door.
She’s knocked three times. Each time
she knocks, a knuckle in her hand breaks.
She wants a cup of water.
The desert here is wide.
In fact, this is the widest point.
Sometimes I like to go up to the roof
and ring our huge bell.
The sound floats in the air
like some hundred ships
all tossed on a single wave.
It moves out across the sand,
and nothing stops it. I think it can
go forever. I think of places the sound
goes. Cottages, little green
hedgerows, gardeners looking up.
“Oh, it’s time for lunch,” they must say,
“there’s the bell.”
A Turn
So many people had come by asking for water that day
that I took the last one with me to the well.
We both climbed in. It is, you know, one of my favorite places.
At the bottom, I have set up a fine little room
with soft cushions and a phonograph.
“What would you like to hear,” I ask her.
She says, “Mozart, I guess,” and darts
her little tongue at me, coyly disengages a dress strap.
“Oh you deipnosophists are all alike!” I shout,
and put on Brahms to spite her.
In response, she wags her tail. It is long and soft,
most alluring. Alluring, one might say,
if one lived in a house in the desert.
Who knew, I ask you, who knew when I was a child
that I would one day be made a present
of such a lovely girl as this?
That Season
That season there were comedies in every playhouse.
One drought had followed another until certain countries
relied solely upon humor to survive their harsh winters.
At the time I had just begun an illustrious career
as a trainer of soldiers. I didn’t further the war — it was
against my interest. But I taught one skill to the troops:
how to stand immediately behind their opponents.
A fight would start. The enemy would lunge,
and there I would be, standing behind him,
from where I might do what I liked to help or hinder
his passage through the war. The trick, of course,
was in a particular grin and a twisting of the limbs
which accompanies the sudden shift right or left.
The whole thing was rather funny, or so I thought,
as the enemy was employing experts to accomplish
precisely the same gain. The upshot? A battle
in which two armies twirled around like dancers
in some avant-garde ballet. Everyone came out
to the countryside to watch. It was the start
of a short but bloodless epoch in world history.
Bestiary 3
And then one day the pilgrimage route changed. No one wanted to see the pillar in the desert, and so I had no more visitors. It was sad really, or so I thought at first. But then I went back to the history book I was writing.
Such a book. .
It doesn’t even use our verbs. They’re too
pointed. Only causeless words
can please, a record without
a point of view. History proper,
for the first time.
Every physical change
in the world listed, along with its place.
I can work only at night, while I’m asleep.
Dreaming, one has time for such things.
Nonetheless, I fall behind. If only I had
an assistant, a really clever one. .
All hermits begin by pretending to be hermits.
And by liking birds.
First Verse
In the house of my sleeping eye the veins of wood
run from the furniture down into the floor.
When I lay my hands upon the table’s surface
