Wheel With a Single Spoke Read online

  apocryphal citation from Euclid

  I.

  What about the soul and body?

  I fall asleep and let my head hang

  into the simultaneous world,

  removing the weight of my head

  from this world

  and burdening with its weight

  the simultaneous world.

  What do you mean, no?!

  Why not, why can’t they be

  at the same time, the same place

  two things?

  What about the soul and body?

  What about the helf and helvol?

  II.

  Ah, yes, I live in a space

  devoid of generosity.

  I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,

  a sphere.

  If I lived on a square, a cube

  there’d be some type of plenty,

  but I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,

  a sphere.

  Everything is based on economy.

  Maximum of content,

  minimum of form.

  Freedom is a form.

  Content is our own existence.

  Everything is based on economy;

  the earth is a sphere,

  the moon a sphere,

  the sun a sphere,

  the stars, sublime, are spheres.

  I live on a sphere, a sphere.

  The earth has mountains,

  the moon rings,

  the sun spots,

  the stars rays,

  but only for this world,

  mine,

  inside their illusion of freedom.

  III.

  A tree cannot be a tree.

  Vegetable vision would be too free.

  I don’t believe I have two hands and feet.

  Corporeal vision would be too free.

  Everything is based on economy.

  In the simultaneous world, my body

  is made of my body

  and a branch of a branch

  and passing time

  of the tramboleen of time.

  In the supersimultaneous world

  my body and my body

  make up my body.

  Everything in the same place, simultaneously.

  Like teeth that bite

  a fiber from one lone world

  meet the teeth that bite off

  a mouthful from another lone world

  that illuminates

  the tramboleen

  in a sphere, a sphere, a sphere.

  IV.

  Everything is based on economy.

  I can’t believe a leaf is just green.

  In the simultaneous world it is ahov

  and in the other simultaneous world it is sirip

  and in the other it is ep

  the other it is ip

  and in all the others it is as it is

  to gather, with all the others in one place,

  and give birth to a sphere.

  V.

  I cross the street.

  In the simultaneous world they knock down a wall.

  In the simultaneous world, the other one, they just conquered

  the tower of Malta,

  and in the other, other simultaneous world,

  a bomb just exploded.

  And in still another world

  other than the others,

  the ocean

  is quiet and windless,

  so when I cross the street

  and set my foot on things,

  in the other simultaneous world,

  like Jesus I walk on water.

  VI.

  I sleep on a bed in an attic,

  in the simultaneous world my bed

  is half in a wall

  half in an engine,

  and in the other world, simultaneous, it rains

  and mushrooms sprout under my sheet.

  In this world there is peace,

  in the simultaneous world there is war,

  in the other simultaneous world it is spring,

  and it is tramboleening

  in the other simultaneous world.

  VII.

  A,

  E,

  a sound for the mouth made of my mouth

  follows.

  And then the complement of A

  then anti-A

  so we can make a sphere, sphere, sphere,

  sphere.

  VIII.

  Ah, body, ah, tree,

  ah, grass and green, ah, rabbit,

  making us up, gulping us up

  wheels with teeth, asymmetrical,

  ah, thought.

  Only the uneasiness of our gulping,

  the upper jaw of tomorrow’s god

  and the lower jaw of yesterday’s god

  devours the prey of today . . .

  IX.

  Euclid, you old inhuman,

  you believed there was just one world,

  based on inhuman postulates,

  you fed humanity

  the common sense of stars,

  believing nothing was like them.

  You brought teeth back from the dead,

  but not their bite.

  With truths of a moment

  you tried to tell us: stop

  when the nimbus of the simultaneous world

  bloomed on our crowns.

  Euclid, you madman,

  good man, grand good man,

  unmeasured, departed,

  and shown to no one,

  only the rattling of tooth on tooth

  and a sound slipping,

  from the son-sphere and the parent

  left outside speech.

  Left outside freedom,

  unsaved,

  horrid.

  X.

  I am arguing with you, Euclid, old man,

  the way Job argued with God

  when He covered him with sores and boils

  just for a bet with the devil,

  with whom He makes a sphere.

  I am arguing with you, idiotic old man,

  with no purpose in life,

  freedom and time, hermit,

  heavenly among the heavens.

  And I cry on your mountainous hand

  with long tears like hunting dogs

  and I say to you: spheres are not beautiful!

  But tell me the truth, do spheres exist?

  UNWORDS

  (Necuvintele, 1969)

  Paean

  What are you, A?

  you, most human and

  absurd letter,

  O, you, glorious sound!

  With you I struggle,

  into you I launch my being

  as once the Achaeans did their horse

  into Troy.

  I will bed you

  and want only you,

  you slutty enchanter

  desperate goddess!

  You dance in my mouth

  when I die and become like

  a soldier pushed up from the back

  by grass growing toward the sky;

  and I want you to not exist

  so I can be free of speech;

  imaginary vagina, A, the letter

  belly-heavy with all others.

  Not to run, but float

  to pass through rivers like sun rays

  without matter,

  banked by deaf ears.

  You, taloned music

  dragging my body over

  words

  like a grazing lamb

  snatched up by an eagle.

  A, you angry ghost,

  who are you

  and what do you want?

  Loss of an Eye

  I used to tap my fingernail until

  no nail was left,

  and my finger until

  it wore away.

  But a blind man came

  to me and said:

  – Brother, leave your nail alone,

  what if there’s an eye

  on the tip,
<
br />   do you want to pop it?

  But still, but still

  this door between you and me,

  someone has to knock it down.

  Jacob Battles the Angel; Or, On the Idea of “You”

  I.

  That which is furthest from me,

  being closer to me,

  is named “you.”

  See how I came to wrestle with myself.

  In me wrestled “you,”

  “you,” eyelid, you wrestled,

  you, hand,

  you, leg, you wrestled

  and though I was lying down, I ran

  around and around my name.

  Only to myself can I not say “you.”

  Everything else, including my soul,

  is “you.”

  You, O soul.

  II.

  – You laughed.

  I denied it and said:

  – No, I didn’t.

  For I was afraid.

  But he said, Yes, you did.

  And truly, the name,

  leaning

  like my body was

  his oaken cane,

  hurled itself against him,

  the one without a name,

  the one nothing but body,

  against “you,”

  the body of all names,

  against “you,”

  the father of all names.

  But he

  when the dawn poured forth

  stopped thinking of me.

  He forgot.

  III.

  – Change your name, he said.

  I responded: I am my name.

  – Change your name, he said.

  I responded:

  – You want me to be someone else,

  you want me to be no more,

  you want me to die

  and be no more.

  How can I change my name?

  IV.

  He said:

  – You were born on my lap.

  I have known you since you were born.

  Do not fear death,

  remember how you were

  before you were born.

  For that is what you will be after you die.

  Change your name.

  V.

  – You cried.

  I denied it and said:

  – No, I didn’t.

  For I was afraid.

  But he said, Yes, you did,

  and stopped thinking of me.

  He forgot.

  VI.

  I am only my name.

  The rest is “you,” I told him.

  He didn’t hear me, for his

  mind was elsewhere.

  Why else would he have said:

  You wrestled the word itself

  and won!

  Was he the word itself?

  Is name word?

  . . . He who is only “you,”

  you and you and you and you,

  who surrounds my name?

  The Battle Against Five Antiterrestrial Elements

  I.

  The general came to me and said:

  – You are the only one left who can do anything;

  it’s all up to you, whether we

  will stay like this, or not.

  . . . Soldiers were

  all along the roads. And

  a great, quiet rabble.

  Not one was at ease.

  Not one was at attention or ready

  for attack, yet.

  II.

  What should I do? How? When? Where?

  He pushed me slowly, between my shoulder blades,

  into the field outside,

  beside a withered maple sapling.

  Here it was quiet,

  and over the freshly ploughed terrain

  suddenly,

  from under the wide clouds at the other end,

  came hurled at me

  an apple.

  III.

  I wanted to dive and catch the apple

  like a ball.

  It would have been a mistake, –

  they told me afterwards, the angels,

  it would have been a mistake,

  they told me afterwards

  friends, family, military officers.

  IV.

  I ran to the apple,

  and peeled its ring

  like it was Saturn,

  I ran to the apple

  and peeled its

  red band like it was

  an old packet of good quality cigarettes.

  V.

  The apple broke in two, the worm

  ran through my fingers into the earth;

  it left by way of those furrows,

  and beside the withered maple at my end

  I grinned

  like a drunk at the door of a bowling alley.

  VI.

  The general took me to the middle of the

  restless soldiers,

  along those narrow streets where they

  were neither at attention nor at ease.

  He took me there to be seen, he took me there

  to calm them,

  under dark clouds hanging

  over the city with narrow streets and soldiers,

  those strange soldiers, clean,

  smelling of lavender,

  neither quiet nor

  unquiet,

  with wide, glistening eyes,

  resting their hands on their weapons;

  at whom, they did not know

  or in which direction

  to open – fire.

  VII.

  I have only one more element

  for you to defeat, the last one,

  then we can escape and be, –

  another way, we will be – but in another way . . .

  said the general to me.

  VIII.

  Two, three, and four.

  The second, third, and fourth battle

  I cannot remember any more.

  The general assured me that they

  had nothing to do, at all, with words,

  and thus nothing to do with either things

  or our civilization.

  The general assured me

  that I had won the two,

  three, four,

  the second, third, fourth battle,

  but as winner I had lost the right

  to learn anything about the victims

  or the battleground,

  by rote or by heart,

  under clouds or inside nerves.

  The general gave as proof the fact that I am,

  that he is,

  that we are,

  that they are,

  that the city still existed, as we knew it.

  The general told me that we

  cannot praise ourselves with victory

  of the second,

  third, fourth,

  because they have nothing to do with the domain

  of communication,

  the domain of comprehension,

  OMPREHENSION . . .

  MPREHENSION . . .

  PREHENSION . . .

  REHENSION . . .

  EHENSION . . .

  IX.

  I understood that the battle

  against the fifth element,

  the definitive battle, would take place

  on a street.

  At that moment, the battle began.

  – Move the walls, I said.

  – Move the walls, I shouted,

  and I moved all the walls from behind.

  (The general held my shoulder

  to keep me from having a wall at my back

  so I was victorious.)

  The general clapped my left shoulder

  and I had no wall at my back,

  just the general.

  It, the one in front of me, it

  ended up with no wall in back.

  It, from the fifth antiterrestrial element,

  having walls behind it,

  ended up wit
h no walls in back.

  Because of the general and me,

  it ended up with no walls in back.

  All the houses on the street

  I moved with a brusque gesture,

  and it,

  the fifth antiterrestrial element,

  would have liked to move the other part

  of the walls

  of the street,

  and it, the fifth,

  would have liked to move the other part

  of the street . . .

  but the general clapped

  my left shoulder

  so I had no more walls in back of me;

  it, the fifth,

  could not imagine I was not in front of it,

  but I simply walked the street

  with the general in back of me.

  That’s how I could move all its walls from behind,

  moving a Wall means

  the death of the fifth element.

  It fell, emaciated,

  nothing in back of him,

  noiseless

  and orange.

  It fell as though it had not been.

  I moved its walls.

  I moved its Wall.

  X.

  Tired, mired, perspired,

  we walked with the general

  through the soldiers.

  They looked at us

  and could not believe we had won.

  They looked at us, the general

  and me,

  ready to fight.

  They could not imagine our victory.

  They could not believe

  there was nothing left to fight for.

  Their disbelief

  wore on the general.

  But the general, for some time,

  like a wing of cinders hung

  delicate,

  from my spine.

  XI.

  Above me there was a voice:

  – Beloved child,

  you have square hands,

  unstained by blood!

  The Heart’s Battle Against Blood

  I.

  I have no sky. What is far from me

  am I, black, interior.

  My sky is made of black flesh.

  Buried sky.

  I have no field. Its edges are burned.

  It rises up like a palm

  that claws its fingers together, into a fist.

  I have only enough space for space to go numb

  around me.

  I inflate and deflate.

  I inflate with foreignness

  and deflate from loneliness.

  I cannot advance.

  The distance from me to me

  is covered with death.

  It abates,

  the sensation of leaving yourself.

  I am the one who guards the door

  in case I try to run away.

  II.

  Blood comes in the dark

  bearing illogical news, – cry

  for it, O eye rolled back,

  O ice, tip of the stalagmite.

  So I suffocate in nuances –

  angels, run unraveled over waters,

  Byzantium, your wood is broken, brothers

  on the mother’s side, foreign on the father’s.

  When wood comes to power,