Wheel With a Single Spoke Read online

  When a god swallows me, a living god,

  I’ll plunge into the well of his stomach

  where I will become a part of his body,

  and stink like drink or undigested flesh.

  I, That Is, He

  He, he was made to be prey,

  prey of selected words, –

  with a falcon on the last syllable

  He, he rejoiced to feel

  he is feed

  he is food . . .

  That’s why he

  stretched himself over time

  skewered

  and the hotter it burned

  outside,

  the more astoundingly he ripened

  inside

  From him rose

  like smoke from an offering

  un-understandable words

  like these:

  Lord God

  helm of wisdom

  sword of power . . .

  Poem

  Sometimes I talk to your face,

  a high wall, made of stone

  that disappears lazily into clouds.

  I shout every noun

  I have ever known.

  I pluck seconds from the hour

  and present them, still beating,

  in the agreeable shape of silence

  I witness the fate of every planet.

  The high wall, made of stone,

  opens a great blue eye

  then shuts.

  What?

  To see if I could see

  I put long bird

  claws, like lashes,

  on my antic eyelid.

  And a bull’s thick bellow

  bedded within my brow

  just above my vision,

  straight, Chaldean.

  – Heeyy, what do you see? tell us, tell us!

  – I see words.

  – Say what they are, say what!

  (Underneath the skylarks, I remain as quiet as before.)

  A mute comes to me and asks:

  – What?

  – Water!

  – What?

  – Whoy!

  Game Delay

  Stadium empty, benches bent under bitter light,

  wrapped in rain.

  One player looks alive, lying on the track.

  A line of snails slides from his sleeve

  and over the grieving grass.

  A wheel with handles

  floats at an angle over the leafy peaks.

  Another player looks alive,

  he lies in a circle around a ball

  like the rings of Saturn.

  But who will kick the ball

  with rings and everything, over the rain?

  We will have to bring buckets of lime

  and a lot, a lot of chalk.

  Night will fall before then,

  the locker room has risen to the sky.

  The other team has disappeared.

  A single shoe lies near us,

  cleats up:

  you could drink from it, have a nip,

  but their mouths and white teeth

  have disappeared, unsated

  into the dark.

  Tennis

  Evening falls over the tennis players.

  Beyond the fence was dark.

  A young girl with legs up to her neck

  flutters after an enchanting ball.

  I picked a dog up courteously,

  and decapitated

  it with a single blow. The body

  nudged its departed head.

  Forward, forward, forward . . .

  At the edge of the table, the head fell.

  Body up, head down.

  What it became, it could not tell.

  Give me the racket. Bam! The barking head flies

  over the court, while evening begins.

  Behind me, the god with a single eye

  grimaces and pulls my shins . . .

  my arm, shoulder, shadow,

  my farewell, my fare, my well,

  my fa and re and we and ll . . .

  Unwords

  It offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.

  I offered it a hand like a leaf with teeth.

  It offered me a branch like an arm.

  I offered it an arm like a branch.

  It leaned its trunk toward me

  like an apple tree.

  I leaned my shoulder toward it

  like a knotty trunk.

  I heard its sap beat

  tapping like blood.

  It heard my slowing blood rise like sap.

  I passed through it.

  It passed through me.

  I became a single tree.

  It

  a single he.

  A LAND CALLED ROMANIA

  (Un pământ numit România, 1969)

  Cain and Abel

  We crown the bones

  with the halo of the body.

  The right of the firstborn.

  The secondborn is left

  just the nervous waves

  of the spirit.

  The secondborn is left

  just the beating gong

  of words.

  The secondborn is left

  just the creation of the world

  without the world.

  He looks just like

  the firstborn.

  Thus, his

  hand holds a mirror.

  DOLCE STIL CLASSICO

  (În dulcele stil clasic, 1970)

  Loss of Consciousness Through Cognition

  I.

  Because my father and because my mother,

  because my older sister and because my younger sister,

  because my father’s various brothers and because my mother’s

  various sisters,

  because my sisters’ various lovers,

  imagined or real,

  because poor relatives and rich relatives,

  because they were all there in my childhood home,

  they were all there, only and all for me,

  because they all had just woken up

  and you could tell,

  because they all had faces like they’d just woken up

  and you could tell,

  you could tell they were there for me,

  there in the house where I was born

  only a few decades ago,

  because they were all there to see me,

  to see how I’d act, how I’d react,

  but even more than that, how I would prepare to be,

  and not wanting to be outdone

  I brought all I could with me.

  What did I bring?

  My translucent pride of lions.

  What was it like, my translucent pride of lions?

  As so:

  like jade,

  a white cloud,

  soft glass.

  They looked as if you could see through them.

  Through them, you couldn’t see a thing.

  They were as big as buffalo.

  Surely as big as buffalo

  since their manes brushed my hips.

  They were animals, but you could wear them like guns.

  Just how could you wear them like guns?

  Like this: one put a translucent paw on the left

  and right side of my chest,

  his translucent tongue licked my sweaty face,

  his translucent tongue licked my sternum.

  May my mother be my witness:

  the lion licked me out of love, and tore my shirt and broke

  my rib.

  My mother will swear it happened,

  because she brought me a new shirt of skin

  with a red wound blooming on the shoulder.

  And she brought me a new rib,

  to replace the broken old one.

  My mother will swear,

  because when my mother made me,

  she made me smart, with spare parts.

  What did she make spare?

  First,
she made two of the earth I walk on.

  If the earth breaks beneath me

  my mama sets another under my soles

  prepared ahead of time

  and also tested beforehand, conditioned

  for various cosmic uses.

  Another transparent lion hangs from me

  with the piquant smell of a man’s underarm,

  like a transparent gun

  shooting transparent screams.

  Not invisible, because you can see through the invisible.

  Transparent, because you can’t see through the transparent,

  as the transparent is memory, mourning

  all that is invisible.

  In front of my kith and kin I came

  with a transparent pride of lions

  on its way to combat invisibility.

  The lions rubbed against one another like flames.

  There were only men among us friends:

  not one lioness with us, not one star.

  I stopped in the middle of the yard of the house where I was born.

  My relatives all rose into the sky

  and sat, white and shining,

  like the peak of a new moon

  white and glimmering

  in a sky without clouds.

  The crowd of transparent lions closed in around me.

  I laughed, to reassure my relatives,

  and they droned timidly,

  and thus night began with a meteor shower.

  I asked for a cigarette, and my father pulled down a ray of sun to light it.

  He came himself, because he wanted to say something to me alone,

  something the others wouldn’t hear.

  I signaled with the heart of the surrounding transparent lions.

  All of them, the lugs, orbited me like a ring of Saturn

  moving silently,

  and they sat around me like

  they should, because on the shield of Achilles were

  set the seasons, when Thetis, his mom,

  gave him the red-hot shield,

  burning the skin of his fingers,

  just out of Vulcan’s oven.

  Talking to you, my spirit shook.

  My father told me what he had to say:

  only I heard.

  None of you heard what he said.

  Nor you.

  I let the lions go back to the way they had been.

  I bared my teeth and shouted:

  – The time when Achilles carried a shield has passed.

  In the meantime, I finished the cigarette,

  my silver relatives shouted in the sky;

  you could pluck the tails of falling stars

  with their encouragement,

  like a harp.

  A translucent lion began to lick my right kneecap.

  I liked how it tickled.

  That’s why he licked my kneecap,

  to make me smile at my relatives.

  II.

  And finally he came.

  He was delicate and very young.

  He was full of goodwill.

  And it didn’t at all seem he wanted

  to confront me.

  All the more so, as he seemed to be crying.

  His bones were thinner than my bones.

  The skin on him was less loved than the skin on me.

  He came by himself.

  Timid.

  Limping from great loneliness.

  He shouted in the voice of a young man in love.

  He shouted, taking care to choose his sounds.

  Suddenly his shout transformed into a greeting.

  Thus did he greet me:

  – Through that porthole I saw myself on the other planet.

  it was unusually frightening,

  it was a nightmare.

  A single planet, full of wounds,

  celestial wounds, uninfected.

  – So, you see, I came back, he told me,

  and you, why confront me at any cost,

  and you, why greet me with translucent lions,

  and you, he said, leaning toward my ear,

  you especially, why come with all of your relatives

  on the planet?

  He was unusually melancholic,

  strangely cold,

  and the whole time

  he caused me an odd regret

  that I and my lions,

  that we, we who came to greet him,

  had nothing womanly in us . . .

  He told me deafly:

  – All my family was choked with fear

  when I departed

  toward the beyond.

  He leaned closer and said:

  – So, to tell you the whole story, absolutely everything;

  I will try to describe what I saw through the porthole.

  – No, I told him.

  Suddenly, all my translucent lions turned to him and let their

  muzzles gape,

  starving,

  with translucent, starving

  teeth.

  – Okay, he said, if you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you.

  – I don’t want to know, I said.

  – Should I go? he asked.

  – How can you go, I responded, can’t you see my sister is in love

  with you?

  – Call your relatives, then, he said, I’m staying.

  – We’re not calling anyone, I said, but stay.

  My translucent lions

  adhered to one another.

  My translucent lions

  adhered fast together.

  They turned into a shield.

  I grew tired and stretched out across it.

  – Let me pick you up and carry you on the shield.

  – Pick me up, I shouted, carry me.

  Soul of Mine, Psyche

  An angel came to me and said:

  – You are a pig of a dog,

  a rabid, mangy pig-snout.

  Grass rots beneath your shadow,

  swamp gas fills your breath.

  – Why? I shouted. Why?

  – No reason!

  An angel came to me and said:

  – Glass is more transparent

  than the oldest of your opaque thoughts.

  Soon you will die, and worms

  will storm your nostrils, your muzzle, your trunk, your snout.

  – Why? I shouted. Why?

  – No reason, the angel said . . .

  Then the angel, ah, the angel, ah, the angel, ah, the angel

  left on wings of gold, and flew

  through air of gold.

  Butterflies of gold

  fluttered in the halo of the angel of gold.

  It flew golden,

  it was utterly, utterly of gold.

  It left toward a distance of gold,

  where set a sun of gold.

  It left toward a distance of gold,

  where set a sun of gold.

  – Why are you leaving me, I shouted,

  why are you leaving, why?

  – No reason, it said, no reason . . .

  Myth

  Unable to die

  inapt to be

  I run

  through unknowing.

  It’s hard to accept

  that I am as I am.

  The place of heaven

  is under the earth.

  But the starving earth

  devours heaven.

  BELGRADE IN FIVE FRIENDS

  (Belgradul în cinci prieteni, 1972)

  To Buy a Dog

  An angel came to me and said:

  – Wouldn’t you like to buy a dog?

  I was in no shape to answer.

  The words I would have shouted back

  were growls and barks.

  – Wouldn’t you like to buy a dog?

  the angel asked, holding in his arms

  my heart

  barking,

  letting blood like a tail.

  – Wouldn’t you like to buy a d
og?

  the angel asked me

  while my heart

  let blood like a tail.

  Vitrification

  It has begun to see through you.

  Look, eye, look,

  you are much harder than before

  and more speechless.

  I see an animal of great size

  lay an egg of great size.

  Look, eye, and be afraid.

  The souls have tired.

  Let’s kiss the bird’s egg

  and bid it

  farewell.

  I see an animal of great size.

  Its breath is green

  its eyes are verdant

  its teeth are green

  and its claws, teeth.

  Look, eye, look

  and bid it farewell.

  It began to see through us

  some time ago.

  I feel it began to see through us

  some time ago,

  as though someone peered

  through us

  And toward what, we do not know.

  Fear

  I could kill her

  with a single blow.

  She giggles at me,

  she grins.

  She meets my eyes

  with her glistening eyes.

  She holds her hand out toward me,

  she shakes, grinning, giggling,

  her dark hair.

  But I – I could kill her

  with a single blow.

  Now, she starts to speak

  soft words, naïve, playful.

  She looks at me, curiously,

  she frowns for a moment

  then

  she grins, giggles.

  She looks in my eyes

  with her glistening eyes.

  While I watch her

  and could kill her

  with a single blow.

  Eye Depth

  The approaching wave has turned to stone midair

  O, even you, my love, have stopped

  in total non-movement

  And time has a fever

  O, it burns me

  The moment is set like a pearl

  and the wave-drops hang in the air

  You, all I can shout, you

  and the word becomes visible

  slowly, slowly, as one sees the dusk settle,

  a word of three letters: you.

  The monstrous animal, – understanding –

  has stopped, and become visible . . .

  Fading

  Ah, how happy were the two of us,

  no, we were never happy,

  but here, dance across my hands,