Wheel With a Single Spoke Read online

we kissed with our throats cut.

  My words and yours

  stuck together, because

  the place where they were born

  was one and the same for both of us.

  Like a god with two bodies and no head,

  we trotted along

  on four feet,

  with four hands patting the walls.

  The river flowed by quickly, even though

  it existed alone.

  Existing, it carried existence and all else.

  Thus frozen and alone, we persisted

  sleeping in the same knee joint,

  in the center without color,

  at the edge without noise.

  Where They Go

  Feelings go, oh,

  in the ear

  Feelings go, oh,

  in the eye,

  nostril, tongue.

  Oh my, feelings go

  in the ear.

  They sleep like

  an earring hangs,

  they trip along the thin cartilage,

  they bed on the drum of the tympanum . . .

  . . . feelings go, oh,

  in the ear.

  Only the soul goes

  nowhere.

  The soul has nowhere to go.

  The soul goes nowhere.

  Its ear is

  no one’s ear.

  Scent on a High Hill

  As though it rained, long ago, the black earth,

  slippery, bugs

  with wet legs press their bodies

  against black branches

  or windows, or door frames, Lord,

  oh,

  and musty air on boxes

  flecked with green.

  God has left then, ah, he’s left,

  and there’s no reason I can smell, no reason.

  High hill, valley, high hill,

  loam, black grass . . .

  The Sacrifice and Burning of Everything

  I break a lamb along its spine,

  my thumb pops out its eye,

  I snap a hoof off, then the nostrils,

  the liver, the unguent kidney,

  I hold the brain jelly in my palm

  careful to not let it drip

  its lamby vision, much too calm,

  and stain my demiurgic tunic.

  Lord, I burn them that the smell be sweet,

  I will burn everything, for the sake of sin,

  I will smite a bull between its horns

  and cut the goat’s jugular, to be forgiven,

  I will tear apart any animal I meet.

  To please you will I scorch

  their pieces, and all of this to signify

  that you and I resemble them. The torch

  will burn whatever you want, the thigh

  on the bone, the lung I pull into the light.

  For you, O Lord, are the greatest sense of smell,

  the nostril of time, the epochal nostril.

  But I will never pluck a flower,

  never crush a splendorous carnation,

  nor will I ever have to pull the sex

  from a sublime body of verdation.

  We who have animal bodies

  lacking roots, we move.

  We, beside the flower’s soft splendor,

  sit eating one another.

  So we may be a tasty feed

  for worlds stuck in the earth,

  the taxes trees and grass

  will pay, simply to be.

  We have only soles, but they

  have roots in myth. Our sky

  has stars alone, just stars,

  while they are deep with halted time.

  What Is Life? When Does It Start, and Where Is It Going?

  Toward all parts at once, said

  the one without parts.

  Toward one part alone, said

  The Part.

  What is it?

  What what is it?

  It is, pure and simple.

  I mean I, I mean T, I mean I, I mean S.

  The first I is older than the second I.

  That’s all.

  Noose

  Along the stone’s grey-white edge

  young people file by,

  thin, like an evil chalk mark

  on the idolatrous slate of the night.

  O equations, to the power of two,

  gentle trigonometry

  of the only one who exists

  in us, the divine “to be.”

  They pass and bells ring,

  they pass and cannons ring,

  they pass and clocks ring,

  ever faster, ever more disturbing.

  Long and holy line, I would hang myself

  from you alone, as if from a tree,

  and let myself be rocked and rung

  by a secular, cold breeze.

  What Is the Supreme Power That Drives the Universe and Creates Life?

  The power to be, but especially the power

  to have been – being.

  The power to not be

  but especially the power

  to have not been – being.

  The power, ah, the power

  to have not had power,

  a-e-i-o-u, e-i-a-u-o,

  u-a-i-e-o.

  Sound with smell,

  continuity without time,

  migratory heart

  exchanging bodies.

  If you are no more, it is like

  you have not been.

  To be is like

  you have not been,

  a-e-i-o-u, u-o-i-e-a,

  A and E

  and I and O

  and U . . .

  What Is a Human? What Are His Origins? What Fate Awaits Him?

  A human is a leaf a human sees.

  A human is a flower a human smells.

  A human is a horse a human rides.

  A human is a peach a human tastes.

  A human is a sea a human touches.

  A human is a wheel.

  A human is milk a human drinks.

  A human is the dawn over a human.

  A human is a dream at night.

  A human is the pleasure of a blue sky a human sees.

  A human is a bird’s flight a human flies.

  A human is a word a human speaks.

  A human is a word understood.

  A human is a word a human reads.

  A human is a word un-understood.

  Human is a word asleep in human stone.

  Human is a word at rest in stars

  above the human.

  Human is the unword of human.

  Human is a dying human tended by a human.

  Human takes a deposition

  about the human, before a human.

  A human was not born so will not die.

  He is eternal and forever

  because he takes all depositions

  about that which exists.

  A human has never existed and will never exist

  because nonexistence is its own witness.

  And still, a human, human, human

  is one who does not believe

  who did not believe

  who we did not believe

  would ever learn to die.

  The One Who Eats Dragonflies

  I eat dragonflies because they’re green

  with black eyes,

  because they have two sets of wings,

  transparent wings,

  because they fly without making noise,

  because I don’t know who made them

  or why,

  because they are beautiful and gentle,

  because I don’t know why they’re beautiful and gentle,

  because they don’t talk and because

  I’m not completely sure that’s true.

  I eat dragonflies because I don’t like

  the taste,

  because they are noxious and

  don’t sit well.

  I eat dragonflies because I don’t understand them,


  I eat them because I live at the same time they do,

  I eat them because once I tried to eat myself,

  my hands first,

  and they were infinitely more disgusting,

  I eat them because I tried

  to eat my tongue,

  my own fleshy tongue,

  and I was terrified when I saw

  it spit out words.

  They were green with black eyes,

  and far from me, and hungry.

  Who Am I? What Is My Place in the Cosmos?

  Without me, it is impossible – proof that I am.

  Without me, it was impossible;

  proof: I pulled myself out of myself,

  that is, from that me that was.

  I am he without whom it is impossible.

  I am he without whom it was impossible.

  I am he who gave a deposition

  on God’s existence.

  I am he who gave a deposition

  on God’s nonexistence, because

  I made God visible.

  I am made by God, because

  I made God.

  I am neither good nor bad,

  I just am.

  I am the word “am.”

  I am the ear that hears “am.”

  I am the spirit that understands “am.”

  I am the absurd body of “am”

  and its letters.

  I am the place where “am” exists

  and the bed where it sleeps.

  Atavistic Melancholy

  Many of them, for various reasons

  all living together below the floor,

  mixed together, becoming enemies

  of death,

  some dying of old age

  or simply

  killing themselves.

  From time to time, someone

  rents a reason.

  I myself lived inside a reason

  of this kind, but after a while

  I wandered off.

  There were so many. From time to time,

  in the common grave where they died

  they left bones behind, much more beautiful

  than I could have imagined.

  Now I have climbed up. Sometimes I am

  able to think even at the level of the moon.

  And still I long, like I can’t take any more,

  to throw myself into the chimney, come out through the fireplace,

  and lie spread over the floor for hours on end

  with my ear pressed to the joists.

  Idols of the Grass

  Occasionally, instead of grassblades

  there are idols, green and thin.

  Horses circumambulate in wonder

  and swarms of ants . . .

  They glisten at night like blades

  threatening the stars and moon.

  The horses run on gravel to the river.

  No more ants are seen, not one.

  Grassblades for an unborn horse

  Only in the future will it eat them.

  I have seen them, yes, I have,

  but I surrendered before them.

  Fruits Before Being Eaten

  I prepare for a great tree,

  the one that is nothing but a smell,

  I turn the nostrils of dusky

  fruits toward the hunted vegetable.

  I strip off my bark and rings

  down to my rising osmotic sap.

  Monday is an apple, Tuesday a pear, and Wednesday

  a bitter grape.

  Autumn falls. A kind of yellow

  arrives, and rust. The tree

  drops its hours. Seconds faint

  within clusters of grapes.

  Let’s have a drink, not wine, but a sour,

  early fermentation, let’s bind the mouths

  of hunting dogs with raffia, so they

  will take the zenith in their snouts.

  One nostril stuck beside the next

  wedded like the tubes of a pan-flute

  and you play what runs through them –

  the smell of fruit.

  Air Currents

  Air currents, running unseen

  through the unseen,

  the pressure of emptiness on emptiness.

  The awkwardness of birds forced

  to move their nerves wrapped

  in feathers.

  Tall animals, sleeping

  on tenuous air.

  They poke their beaks out

  of the atmosphere, in waves.

  Here are spheres, but very

  far apart.

  They want to leap up

  but cannot

  that belowness –

  up above, unexisting,

  Quiet. We prepare for something else.

  Tragedies in Peacetime

  I was enclosed in my own capsule.

  My heart worked well, and

  I would have slept behind it,

  accustomed as I was to the irregular thumps

  of interior time.

  But my every second was measured out

  and I had no patience left,

  not even

  enough to write one letter down.

  If I had died, I would have been good dead,

  a hero, even.

  Everything I had done rocked to and fro

  in the quiet battle of the stars.

  I hung from a hook of fate.

  Red holidays ran from my throat . . .

  But look, they came

  and took me from the capsule.

  They invited my soul to exist

  anywhere I liked, except my body.

  And the liberated soul suddenly

  had time,

  it brought the bird-loud tree to light,

  it was blanched by the moon.

  It would have liked to become a sphere,

  but it found its own body as disgusting

  as Noah’s putrid ark.

  It got lazy, took on angels,

  doubted the reality of fate.

  O unhappy character!

  You should have stayed in myth

  locked in by things that happen

  and kept yourself for yourself, just enough

  to sleep and dream

  the unclear light of your birth.

  Ars Poetica

  for Lucian Raicu

  O music, you vibration

  most rare

  because we will never

  leap over our ears.

  O smells, you wonders

  because my heart may travel

  toward childhood

  through your tunnel.

  O colors, you deceit

  of light.

  O words, you words,

  I stretch out behind you

  constantly, a locomotive’s

  black soul . . .

  Any peak can pierce you

  words, you words,

  and any peak’s desire,

  words, you unwords . . .

  Song

  God forgot me, in my thoughts

  until my thought

  became my body.

  Leaves forgot me

  shading over me

  until the unseen

  became my seen.

  I wait as though someone

  will remember me,

  and meanwhile, worn by air, worn by snow

  I snuff my light in anyone.

  Self-Portrait in an Autumn Leaf

  The unwhole is meant to dominate me,

  god without thighs, goddess without arms.

  Trees without trunks, grass without green,

  a slalom of white through vertical dark.

  Spiders cling to the winding silence

  and behind their muffled fluttering,

  their hearts drag themselves into an older body,

  more solitary, edges crumpled, time sputtering.

  The unwhole is meant to dominate me,

  a single-faced medallion,

  d
ays that begin after noon and end after noon,

  without continuation.

  Time

  It can pop like a lightbulb,

  this second, so familiar.

  It can lie on top of us

  and we drown under stale water.

  Darting shadows flee at dusk

  below the moon, like under a round

  shelter thrown off at random

  by all eyes opening – at once.

  Inverted chimney, its smoke in the ravine,

  the sky pulled into the gape.

  Maybe that’s why it shows, magnified

  like under a glass, what for us remains.

  Look: it resembles no word.

  It cannot be said or seen.

  It lies between the sky and earth

  without an end, without beginning.

  Passage . . .

  I fled by jumping on tip-toe

  from body to body, like an arcade

  lain over the dying row

  of columns in a cold Hellas.

  Dirty in spots, I flew

  with open arms, forehead out,

  eyebrows in the future,

  while my thigh turned snow-white

  between the jaws of a gnawing sky.

  O, mouths give birth to great syllables

  when they close in the abyss . . .

  But I flew through a god’s clenched teeth,

  between Scylla and Charybdis.

  Mirage

  In front of me, the galleries of air

  with rats gnawing,

  wings of angels asleep

  with their sternums stuck in the earth.

  Mirage of abundance, of rest,

  of sleep against the milky

  titty of the mother

  who bore the divine

  Jesus. Fa-la-la.

  It rains and there is trash, fa-la-la,

  it rains inside, in the breath,

  fa-la-la, in fingers, fa-la-la,

  in kneecaps, fa-la-la, the brow,

  fa-la-la, in teeth,

  fa-la-la, in bodies unborn

  and fa-la-la, in bodies great.

  So I’ll Stay

  So I’ll stay, with my snout and pout yanked out

  of the infected air, all of me

  snagged on a hook by the roof of my mouth,

  the pilot of the void and beings.

  My, my, I’ll end up in a cauldron

  spiced with peppery meteorites,

  food for another, higher being when

  the starved with my starvation unites.