almost invisible.
Don’t forget how closely bound I am to you
and don’t abandon me.
My power to not be is so great
my footprints give birth to a cone,
to a mouth with white fangs, for sucking.
And there they fall –
the Seen, Heard, Disgusted, Touched,
like into hunger, unending and deep
into my stomach, nudged and tugged
over to where
the Infinite found its center.
Eye Snow
How it snows. It snows fish eyes,
snake eyes, dog eyes.
It snows so hard the walls become unnatural,
masterless and blind.
It snows. And the eyes burst, leaving behind
glimpses of stones, sea scenes,
instances of the world beyond itself,
shrunk, fleeting.
It snows. Round pupils, square, triangular,
crooked, smooth,
they freeze in colorless icicles,
they hang from gutters, roofs . . .
Eyes rolling in the sewers. Scooped with wooden shovels
to clear the street.
Eyes, ice balls. Eyes, snowmen.
Eyes below the sled that passes solemn, jingling.
Eyes dilate. Ever more, until they burst.
Eyes with black pupils suddenly wide,
large as the windows where the moon beats down,
eyes wide as the wall. It snows. Eyes like towers. Eyes like winter.
Angel Holding a Book
An angel passed,
seated on a black chair,
passed through the air, quiet
and proud.
From my window, I watched
how it passed as though walls were smoke.
Receive one word from me, I called,
you, O angel, from heaven impelled
by a wind roused by the force
of an even greater thought.
But the angel kept silent,
seated on a black chair, reading
an ancient book with a glistening
silver cover, and many pages.
It passed through the new apartment block.
It passed through the brass
gas stations
abstract, divine.
Receive, O angel, I called
the cup from which I drink this wine.
This salt, receive from me, and bread . . .
Night falls heavy against my ribs.
But the angel kept silent, passing
through the tile stove in my room.
On a black chair it sat, reading
a thick book with silver scales.
When it was right in front of me, I called,
O angel come from heaven,
let me hang
from your chair, from your arm.
I just caught the leg
of the chair and latched on to its flight.
I flew with the angel
through air and walls,
dangling like a butterfly in flight,
like the silk of a conquered flag!
And I battered against roofs,
through green and tangled branches,
and I hit tall pillars
and cables and corners and wires . . .
I fought free and fell
into the square at night, quiet.
Oh, it flew away
through air and walls
holding a book, reading
with unbridled passion.
Oh, it went away and I
only wanted to see it more, through the night.
. . . But it slid further and further off
from heaven impelled by a wind
or perhaps by the force
of an even greater thought.
Transparent Wings
I move and all things flap their wings;
the stone wings of stones
beat so slowly,
I can pluck out bits of quartz
like feathers of pain.
It turns out that only the wings of stones interest me
because they beat very slowly,
because they beat inside themselves,
which is at the same time inside time.
Here are chambers, halls, colors,
and throne rooms.
The bird king has no wings.
He does not fly, because one can fly
and flap one’s wings only through him.
Through the arteries of the bird king
migrate cranes and flocks of wild ducks.
A migration from elbow to shoulder.
The tropical meridian
is nothing but his eyebrow.
But the Equator, ah, the Equator!
Here, on rocks where everything is tough,
where time can be touched,
where the past seems not to exist,
where the future cannot be imagined,
is the throne room.
Here is the bird king –
blind, mute.
He is deaf, he limps,
he is unfed, undrunk,
unled, unborn.
He is unsane, unwise,
unhappy,
unnecessary, unborn.
He is unreliable, uncouth,
unhappy, undignified,
unseen, unheard,
untasted, untouched,
unborn.
He is unthinkable, unimaginable, undreamable, unasleep.
He is unreckoned, unmuscled, unborn.
Stones flap their wings the slowest.
Stones hold inside them the bird king.
Stones fly while still.
Stones think of nothing but pyramids.
The bird king is inside,
inside the bird king
are birds,
inside the birds are viscera and gullets,
in the craws of birds are seeds.
Whoever would sow
must first break stones.
Stones move their wings the slowest
many lives must be knotted
together end to end
to make one sense of sight.
With sight like this, you can see time.
Stones move their wings the slowest –
inside them is the bird king.
The bird king sits on an egg-shaped throne.
It is the same earth on which we live.
The bird king will hatch it.
The Young
They kiss, yes, they kiss, they kiss,
the young, on a street, in a bistro, against a railing,
they kiss each other constantly as if they
were nothing but the endpoints
of a kiss.
They kiss, yes, they kiss in heavy traffic,
in subway stations, in movie theaters,
on city buses, they kiss desperately,
violently, as if
once the kiss ended, once the kiss was over, beyond the kiss
there might be nothing but the exile of old age
and death.
They kiss, yes, they kiss, the young so slender
and in love. So slender,
they might not know there is bread in the world.
So in love, they might not,
might not know there is a world.
They kiss, yes, they kiss as if
they’re in the dark, the safest dark,
as if no one could see them, as if
the sun would rise again
luminous
only after kissing rips and bloodies their mouths
and they can keep kissing only
with their teeth.
President Baudelaire
Ill, I visited President Baudelaire,
Saturn had passed through my constellation,
and I was devastated to learn that absinthe was outlawed
and that, generally speaking, no one makes it anymore,
so
I lived in a zone of chlorine, where often
slipping from the bridle of existence,
in order to examine the spirits behind my brow-bone,
I let my beautiful skull crack open.
You are losing touch with your obsession, he told me,
and I responded that I’d been connected for a while,
and maintain relations with giants, like
some Mercury who brings only bad news.
The president smiled and laid his skeletal arm
around my shoulder, reminding me of the fact
that death itself is a form,
and just as perishable as any other.
He lamented, like me,
the awful state of albatrosses
and the thinning forests of symbols,
the degradation of the word and blank verse.
The president believed it did not become
the living to experience sadness,
and showed concern, at the same time,
for my hasty unions with the cosmos.
You’ll only end up in pieces, he said,
so do your best to preserve
the phantom of some spiritual state
with a transcription into our good, old hendecasyllable.
My face was pressed against a violet flower
wilted by presidential sweat
from the time he took a nap
with his forehead in the plant.
It rains too much, said the president,
it makes the stones suffer
and the legions of monsters we enlist
to serve the syllables of our poetry.
He also noted that the language of poetry
was threatened by certain modishness,
and he lamented, like me,
the exaggerated interest accorded
to poets’ physicalities.
President Baudelaire rested the skeleton of his hand
on my shoulder, and asked
whether, come the next election, I would give thought
to voting for him.
I told him I would, and left
him, connected, and I went back to
that exhausted atmosphere of chlorine
in which of late I’ve led my existence.
LAUS PTOLEMAEI
(Laus Ptolemaei, 1968)
The Atmosphere
I sit on a terrace of loss
at night, under a moon that covers half
the sky.
If not for the sight of constellations
the sky would be a shoulder blade
in red.
The line of the sea. A cannon firing
at who knows what barbarian invasion.
And my book yet unpublished,
and my consolation of being the coauthor
of the great Ptolemy.
Rejoice, unquiet soul, in visits,
in losing at games of chance.
Console your parents, whose son
has left for good a home that teems
with monotonous ghosts and retrograde visions
perpetuum mobile
of bones from ever older men, growing younger
under crosses of ruined stone.
I review the celestial ships arriving, the boats
that see us and shout: UK! UK!
or Vef! Vef!
It means nothing to us
who think in thoughts
and speak in words.
In great halls, illumined by the full rising
of the moon, hu!
How disgusting it can be
drawing, drawing
ticket after ticket
in the shinbone lottery.
And the solitary cannon fires into the night,
and a sweet, reddish light falls on my hands,
and I let my hands be gnawed
by starving dogs,
each finger receiving a ring
made of ashes,
my pain tempered by a song.
Steam flows into buildings
through the gaps under heavy latches.
The line of the sea is straight, monoliths
sink into me, oranges
I crush underfoot, I move forward
against the current of time.
Damp and a smell of citrus,
if I yell loud enough, the heart-bone echoes.
My book still is not printed
but my consolation
is to have the other author – Ptolemy,
the most learned
of the learned.
Reading
Ptolemy said to me:
– Two are the ways being may be:
the state of plentiful time at hand,
that is, the state of contemplation,
and the state of time’s shortage, that is
the state of crisis.
Then he fell quiet.
I found some paper and wrote:
– Contemplation, that is, static being,
changes on its own, out of boredom;
the crisis of time, that is,
the weary state of being
that keeps wearing its old clothes,
its swaddling blanket.
On Contemplative Beings, Things They Say, and Some Advice I Would Give Them
Contemplative beings love reason.
Reason moved the earth
from the center of existence
and made it turn
around the sun.
Reason proved it with numbers
but not with the manifestations of numbers.
Advice:
contemplation and beings, as they are able,
should find a reason to be,
should mix, should abandon the static.
Advice:
those who made the earth
the slave of the sun
should justify themselves.
Otherwise, it’s sad on earth.
Beings outside of time
left the earth in the center of the universe
and that’s good,
because it’s the truth.
Beings short of time
tried to measure with common sense
even what cannot be seen.
Advice:
To doctors, physiologists, anatomists:
first
one should doubt
the heart
is the center of feeling
and the mind
the place of thought.
I tell them:
soon this will be proven,
it will be proven
that common sense was not wrong, that
the heart
is the center of feeling
and the mind
the place of thought . . .
But it’s another kind of heart
and a completely other kind of mind.
A Few General Statements on Speed
We differ from each other in speed.
We share only our aloneness.
The speed of existence of a stone
is slower than the speed of existence
of a horse.
But the stone sees the sun and stars
while the horse sees the fields and grass.
I say:
The pyramids marked the slowest speed,
the longest gaze.
A pharaoh’s mummy is a piece of stone.
The fleshly pharaoh saw Egypt.
The stone pharaoh sees the cosmos.
To those made of flesh and bone
I say:
You only see what surrounds you.
Ideas are a kind of stone,
so contemplate.
To those made of wood and other durable materials
I say:
Shatter!
Rot!
If you have seen the whole,
fill yourselves with flesh
so you may see the part.
Bones are interior crutches,
they hold up fl
esh and nerves
but are better friends and closer to stones.
I say:
Flesh and bone,
I say: common sense and shortage of time.
On the Life of Ptolemy
Ptolemy believed in the straight line.
It exists.
Count its points and, if you can,
tell me the number.
To doubt the straight line
you first have to know how many points
it has.
I detest those who make an arc
from a woman
they do not know and have
never seen.
When Ptolemy was born,
the earth was nothing in particular,
when he died,
the earth was as flat as your palm.
When Ptolemy was born
many had not been, yet.
After he died,
quite a few had not been, yet.
On the Death of Ptolemy
However often I think of the fact that
Ptolemy died
the same despair comes over me
as though he died
yesterday,
today,
or even now, at this moment,
in front of my eyes.
I cannot believe he died,
his scent of a living man
lingers in the air around me.
His gestures still stir
the air
and I hear his voice upon my eardrums
as though the truth had
a human body;
and his way of putting things
in your face
still makes me redden with embarrassment,
with the guilt
that I knowingly let
the wonderful, unreal, unending earth
become a sphere.
Nothing will ever convince me he has died.
Field
I believe the earth is flat,
flat and thick as a plank,
pierced by tree roots, hanging
into the void, skull and shank,
that the sun doesn’t rise in the same place
and it’s not always the same sun,
but smaller or bigger,
altogether different, at random.
I believe that when it’s cloudy
nothing rises, and I fear the end
of that long line of suns
sliding out of hell toward Eden.
Then I send out homing birds
who scan the water with their eyes,
who tell me where to steer
the fields, to find another sunrise.
An Argument with Euclid
Postulate
One thing cannot occupy the same space
at the same time as another.
Wheel With a Single Spoke Page 5
