Wheel With a Single Spoke Page 4

  by the heart to its seed,

  to that unmoved in itself, identical

  to the pit of the earth

  that extends from itself

  infinite gravitational arms

  and draws everything into itself and suddenly

  into an embrace so powerful

  that through its arms leaps movement.

  III.

  I will run, therefore, in every direction

  at once,

  I will run after my own heart,

  like a chariot

  simultaneously pulled in every direction

  by whipped horses.

  IV.

  I will run until advance, until rush

  itself passes me

  and pulls further ahead of me

  like the fruit’s skin from its seed,

  until running

  will run even within itself, and be still.

  And I will collapse

  over it like a young man

  onto his lover.

  V.

  And once I have let running

  pass me by,

  once

  movement within itself is still

  like stone, or

  better, like mercury

  behind the glass

  of a mirror,

  I will see inside all things,

  I will embrace them with myself,

  all things at once,

  and they

  will throw me back, once

  all that was thing in me

  has been changed, over time, into things.

  VI.

  See me

  remaining what I am,

  with flags of loneliness, with shields of chill,

  back toward myself I run,

  pulling myself from everywhere,

  pulling myself from myself before,

  behind myself, on my right and

  my left, above and

  underneath myself, departing from

  everywhere and giving to

  everywhere signs that will bring me to mind:

  to the sky – stars,

  the earth – air,

  shadows – branches and budding leaves.

  VII.

  . . . odd body, asymmetrical,

  surprised by itself

  in the presence of spheres,

  surprised to stand before the sun,

  waiting patiently for light to grow

  a body to fit.

  VIII.

  To keep yourself with your own earth

  when you are a seed, when winter

  liquefies its white, long bones

  and spring arises.

  To keep yourself with your own land

  when, O human, you are alone, when you are battered

  by unlove,

  or simply when winter

  decomposes and spring

  moves its spherical space

  like the heart

  from itself toward the edge.

  To enter purely into the labor

  of spring,

  to tell seeds they are seeds,

  to tell earth it is earth!

  But first of all,

  we are the seeds, we are

  those seen from all sides at once,

  as though we lived inside an eye,

  or a field, where instead of grass

  gazes grow – and we

  suddenly hard, almost metallic,

  cut the blades down with ourselves, so they

  will be like every thing

  among which we live

  and to which

  our heart gave birth.

  But first of all,

  we are the seeds and we prepare

  within ourselves to throw ourselves into something

  much higher, into something

  that has the name of spring . . .

  To be inside phenomena, always

  inside phenomena.

  To be a seed and keep yourself

  with your own earth.

  ALPHA

  (Alfa, 1967)

  Raid on the Interior of Stones

  Raid on the interior of stones,

  on fixed formations.

  I pray for boredom, spleen,

  for movement so slow

  a city could encompass the wooden solemnity

  of a chessboard,

  and sounds would make such spheres that

  a hand could pluck them from the air,

  and flying arrows would trail lazy spiders fluttering

  in the shimmering geometry of their nets.

  I pray for boredom,

  the blade of grass somehow I pray

  will not emerge from itself,

  but adhere to its own monotony,

  like seconds to hours and hours to time.

  Apples I pray, on my knees

  before the shadow of apples, will stay

  unseparated from apples;

  and my blood-marked head I batter against the rain’s thunder,

  to show it should follow

  more closely the mindless zigzags

  of lightning.

  I pray the sun to stay round,

  I pray the moon to stay far away

  and lifeless,

  I pray it will keep its circles just the same

  and not change them into purple tentacles,

  and hang like a jellyfish, dead, in space.

  I pray for boredom, spleen,

  to myself I pray, for boredom,

  never sure how to set

  my heart aside, a foreign planet within me

  that I enclose like petrified air.

  Raid on set destinies,

  on clean formations:

  I pray for boredom, spleen . . .

  Surface

  Because I walk on you,

  you are covered in footprints.

  My soles are worn through.

  We only lose touch when I jump

  or you cave in.

  Where I end, you begin.

  Glassy white with phantoms.

  They reveal themselves: angels descend,

  crystals rise.

  Day descends upon night,

  a continuous sunrise

  over various planets.

  I don’t know if it’s hot out or cold.

  I don’t even know if we are alone.

  Something, I don’t know what, passes.

  I look up,

  as you do, and you reveal yourself, suspended.

  I hold out my hands and walk my palms over you.

  Where I end, you rise,

  I hang from you like a long seed pod

  Underneath, far below, the whipped horses run.

  If I let go, I’ll fall onto a saddle.

  But I won’t.

  If I stay as I am any longer,

  I will either freeze or catch fire.

  But I won’t.

  I close my eyes: only the interior is revealed.

  That is, blackness, that is, purpleness.

  I close my eyelids down to my feet,

  as though I were an eye.

  That’s it, obviously, I’m an eye.

  But in whose socket?

  You Might Think I Was a Tree

  You might think I was a tree.

  A tree has many arms,

  and I, many arms:

  two visible, a thousand invisible.

  When the wind blows, its arms rustle;

  I like to believe that when I move

  my arms are stirred by a

  breeze uncanny.

  You might think I was a tree;

  each of my words is a leaf.

  This comparison pleases me.

  It’s how you know I’m old.

  When I was young, I compared myself to an Indian god,

  one with many arms, many legs.

  I liked to say that lots of my arms and legs

  had been snapped off and that

  I ended up with just two arms, on


  the right side,

  and just two legs,

  also on the right side.

  So when I ran, I made a circle.

  Then a spiral.

  Now that I’m old,

  I like to compare myself to a tree.

  I think I move my arms and legs

  beaten by a wind, uncanny,

  and I am happy

  with this comparison.

  Soon, I won’t compare myself to anything,

  my arms or legs won’t move,

  and my words

  won’t look like leaves.

  I will be given permission,

  by friends and enemies, to change planets.

  Just like that, and I will prepare, for no reason,

  to compare myself to something utterly utterly other –

  and when I get old again –

  with another utterly

  utterly other something.

  Then I will change planets again

  and so on, and so on,

  what monotony, God Almighty!

  A Sleep with Saws Inside

  A sleep with saws inside

  decapitates horses.

  They neigh blood and run

  down the street, like red tables fleeing

  the Last Supper.

  And the horses run, in red clouds,

  and clatter their shadows. Ghosts in the saddles.

  Leaves stick to their throats

  or fall straight through,

  like the shadow of a tree falls down a well.

  Bring the buckets, bring the glass goblets,

  bring goblets and mugs,

  bring helmets left over from the war,

  bring whoever has one eye missing,

  or an empty spot for an arm

  where he can be topped off.

  Everywhere, blood runs from headless horses,

  runs wherever it wants,

  and I, the first to see

  all this,

  may inform you that I drank some

  and it was very, very good . . .

  Ulysses

  for the poet Geo Bogza

  And now, friends, our spine grumbles

  while pulling its paws from our flesh

  and tries to run off on its own

  to the edge of the sea.

  Such passion for ships.

  Such drive for masts.

  It wants itself alone, for itself,

  our flesh is not its problem.

  It licks itself white,

  with a tongue of memories.

  Nothing is its problem,

  it lends itself of its own free will –

  to birds, dog, or dolphin,

  disturbing itself,

  untamed by guns

  or bridles

  or tons of water above.

  Each of its bones is a skull,

  its vertebrae are skulls

  that think of the whip’s tail,

  the lash, the harness,

  its ribs are stretched-out skulls

  that think of horizons, embraces,

  graces,

  O, each bone is a skull,

  only skulls are true bones.

  O, each bone is a skull

  that’s lost its mind

  taking ownership, instead of

  the earthy and watery parts of the world.

  Impatient are they within us,

  O friends, our spines,

  they want to leap out, friends,

  they want to encircle

  in vertebrae

  one brain apiece.

  Bones cannot be bones anymore,

  they can’t be ribs, tibia, or femurs anymore,

  they are fed up with being the phalange,

  sternum, clavicle,

  they all want to be skulls.

  They are in fact the skulls

  of our ancestors

  decapitated within us

  ground up within us, drowned within us

  hanged within us.

  They are the skulls of our ancestors

  and they fight among themselves

  for the right to be a skull.

  They are the skulls of our ancestors

  condemned to be a kneecap, or an ankle.

  O friends, what is ours is only the forehead,

  all other bones are skulls of our ancestors.

  Our spines scream within us,

  they yearn to yank themselves out and run to the sea,

  to the edge of the sea they yearn to run,

  passionate for ships

  insane with longing for masts.

  VERTICAL RED

  (Roşu vertical, 1967)

  A Soldier

  A soldier hanging by his hands

  from the edge of a cloud . . .

  From his boots, by clenched hands

  hangs another soldier. From his boots

  another, then another, then another and another,

  and so on into the middle of the earth.

  I would like to slide down that line

  like a rope,

  and as I slid, their belt

  buckles would scratch my face.

  And as I slid, they would scratch my chest

  and as I slid, as I slid, they would tear

  off strips of flesh,

  and as I slid, as I slid, I would become

  a skeleton.

  When I finally finished, I would lay my head

  on a stone.

  While I slept, the torn-off strips

  would come back down and wrap around me.

  Eventually, my blood would flow back

  along with my pain.

  I open my eyes and look around.

  The column of soldiers is gone.

  The wind, probably, pushed it

  and the cloud somewhere else.

  EGG AND SPHERE

  (Oul şi sfera, 1967)

  Fate

  When I opened my eyes, I was

  set inside this body you see,

  found guilty for the way I was,

  guilty as a leaf for being green.

  And suddenly I began to sense

  the pace of screams and light

  and feel the dolorous curve of dawn

  and every tree, alive.

  To shout when pecked by darting birds,

  to burn when hit by a meteorite,

  to sleep along the necks of swans,

  and, struck by oars, to die.

  O, each syllable is my elephant tusk,

  its ivory inverted at midday,

  and mythic, frozen letters

  reform in each delirious gaze.

  Smelling a Flower

  Smelling a flower is

  a most shameful act . . .

  It’s like sticking your nostrils into your

  own mother.

  O, poor species,

  O, sad, unstable form, vertebrate or not.

  Smelling a flower is like

  an involuntary rape

  of volition.

  It’s like

  letting spring affect you

  not in winter but on the moon.

  Old men, young men, adolescents,

  who think they can handle it,

  the grandchildren of Oedipus,

  dirty progenitors

  of the death of their own genesis,

  they believe

  that burying your nostrils inside a flower is an

  action

  worthy of their body’s privacy . . .

  Smelling a flower is an act

  of incest.

  Son of the father,

  father of that which is –

  they who believe that death itself

  is a privilege their brutal natures enjoy.

  O, flower,

  sweet-smelling milk of the Mother of God,

  stability of still stillness.

  Father and Son

  multiply by smell,

  they rape the sacred

  womb of sc
ents.

  We, ashamed and ostracized,

  our noses broken, we sit up straight

  on stone chairs, holding books,

  we smell only with our gaze – and that’s it,

  and ostracized

  and spring-bleached, pure

  and wise.

  Winter Ritual

  Always a cupola,

  always another.

  Rising like a saint’s halo,

  or a rainbow, just.

  Your upright body. My upright body

  posed for a wedding.

  A wise priest of air

  presents two rings of air.

  You raise your left hand, I, my left arm:

  we reflect smiles at each other.

  Your friends, my friends, weep

  tears in syllables from hymns.

  We kiss. They take our picture.

  Flash. Dark. Flash. Dark.

  I bend a knee, I fall on all fours.

  Melancholic, I kiss your ankle.

  I take you by your shoulder, you by my waist,

  and we exit solemnly into winter.

  Your friends, my friends, make way.

  Two thousand pounds of snow fall over us.

  We freeze to death. In spring

  only curls adorn our skeletons.

  Medieval Letter

  We rushed the pyramids of lime,

  but not to make walls – no.

  We carried words of this Roman tongue

  but not for mouths to speak.

  We are, my love, the same.

  Only the stones have changed,

  only the blades of grass.

  The lord of this place is violet, silence,

  and carpenter’s glue – yes,

  to mend our broken arms.

  We are, my love, the same

  and no one knows – yes,

  our souls have returned

  from a journey through the world

  of pairs, one by one,

  tree by tree, blade by blade,

  stone by stone.

  Invocation

  Don’t forget how closely bound I am to you

  and don’t abandon me,

  all of you, constant, forever,

  you all but me,

  constant, forever.

  O landscapes, don’t abandon me,

  I am blind, and I can hear.

  Nor you, tender silks,

  touched

  by one without arms,

  though a man, identical

  to the statue unearthed from deep in the planet,

  Venus de Milo . . .

  My empty eye socket beds

  the mummified pharaoh.

  For some time, I’ve been looking

  for a kind of pyramid unseen,

  where invisible slaves lost

  their lives, too transparent,