The Collected Poems (22 page)

the sensible say
you can coexist
with the monster

just try to avoid
violent gestures
violent speech

when threatened
take on the form
of a stone or leaf

obey wise Nature
who urges mimicry

breathe shallowly
play we're not here

Mr Cogito however
dislikes living as-if

he'd like to fight
the monster
on solid ground

so he goes out at dawn
to the sleeping suburbs
intrepidly fitted out
with a long sharp object

he calls to the monster
through empty streets

he insults the monster
provokes the monster

like the daredevil scout
of a non-existent army

he calls—
come out you dirty coward

through the fog
you see only
the huge mug of nothingness

 

As Régis suggests they resemble each other like twins
Ravaillac and Princip Clement and Caserio
most often they come from lines of epileptics and suicides
though they themselves are healthy that is to say average
usually young very young and they stay that way forever

their solitude they sharpen their knives for months and years
and in the forest outside the city they train in sharpshooting
they work out the attack they're diligent alone and very honest
bring meager earnings to their mothers care for siblings don't drink

no girls or friends

   after the attack they surrender without a struggle
they hold up manfully under torture don't ask for a pardon
deny alleged partners in crime produced by the prosecution
there was no conspiracy they were really acting on their own

   their inhuman sincerity and simplicity
drives judges defense lawyers the public crazy no sensation

   they who send these souls off into the other world
will be struck by the calm of the condemned men in their last hour
calmness an absence of anger of regret and even of hatred
often a kind of radiance
   their brains are rummaged through
their hearts are weighed stomachs opened however no deviations
from the norm are discovered

not one of them managed to change the course of history
but a dark message passed from generation to generation
so those small hands are worthy of our careful reflection
the small hands in which trembles the sureness of a blow

 

My portable empire between Athens and Megara
all on my own I ruled over the woodlands gorges precipice
without the advice of old men silly insignia nothing but a club in hand
dressed in a wolf's shadow and the chilling sound of the word Damastes

I lacked subjects that is I had them only briefly
they didn't live till dawn but it is slander to call me a thug
as do the counterfeiters of history

in fact I was a scholar a social reformer
my true passion was anthropometry

I designed a bed to the size of the perfect man
I measured captured travelers against that bed
it was hard to avoid—I admit—stretching limbs
        trimming extremities

the patients died but the more of them perished
the surer I became that my research was correct
the end was sublime progress requires sacrifice

I wanted to remove the distance between high and low
to give a single form to repellingly diverse humanity
I never wavered in my endeavors to even people out

my life was taken by Theseus killer of the innocent Minotaur
the one who fathomed the labyrinth with a prissy ball of yarn
a fraud full of ruses without principle or vision of the future

 

The condottieri of Cyrus the Foreign Legion
crafty and ruthless—to be sure—murdered
two hundred and fifteen daylong marches
—please kill us we can't go any farther—
thirty-four thousand six hundred fifty stadia

harrowed by insomnia they traversed wild countries
tricky fords snowy mountain passes and salty plains
hacking a path through the living bodies of peoples
it's good they didn't claim to be defending civilization

the famous cry on the mountain of Teches
is interpreted incorrectly by sentimental poets
they had just found the sea a way out of the dungeon

they journeyed without Bible prophets burning bushes
without signs on earth without signs from the heavens
with the terrible consciousness that life is momentous

 

I arrived too late
for the last transport

I stayed in the city
which is not a city

without morning papers
without evening papers

there's no
prison
clock
or water

I am enjoying
some time off
outside time

I go on long walks
down avenues of burned houses

avenues of sugar
of broken glass
of rice

I could write a treatise
on the abrupt change
of life into archaeology

there's a terrible silence

the artillery in the suburbs
choked on its own courage

at times
you hear nothing
but the tolling of scattered walls

and the soft thunder
of tin roofing swaying in the air

there's a terrible silence
before a predator's night

sometimes
an absurd airplane
appears in the sky

it throws out leaflets
calling for surrender

I would be happy to surrender
but I've no one to surrender to

at present I live
in the best hotel

a murdered porter
keeps to his lodge

from a pile of debris
I walk straight out
onto the first floor
into the rooms
of the former mistress
of the former chief of police

I sleep on a bed of newspaper
cover myself with the poster
promising an ultimate victory

in the bar there's still
medicine for solitude

bottles of gold liquid
and a symbolic label

I bear no one any grudge
for my being abandoned

I ran out of luck
and a right hand

on the ceiling
the light bulb
resembles an upside-down skull

I wait for the victors

I drink to the fallen
I drink to deserters

I have rid myself
of dark thoughts

even forebodings of death
have abandoned me now

 

They say that he went deaf—but it isn't true
the demons of his hearing worked tirelessly
no dead lake ever slept in the shells of his ears

otitis media then acuta
made his hearing aid catch
shrieking tones and hisses

rumbling and a thrush's call the wooden bell of forests
he took from this what he could—high violin descants
lined with the thick blackness of string basses

the list of his illnesses passions falls
is as rich as the list of his finished works
tympano-labyrinthische Sklerose
probably
lues

finally what had to come came—a great stupor
mute hands beating on dark boxes and strings
the angels' puffed-out cheeks proclaim silence

typhus in childhood then angina pectoris arterial sclerosis
in the Cavatina of Quartet Opus 130
you hear shallow breathing a contracted heart dyspnea

slovenly quarrelsome with his face marked by chicken pox
he drank to excess and cheaply—beer cab driver's schnapps
his liver weakened by tuberculosis finally gave up the game

 

Mr Cogito
reading a book
on the horizons of science
a history of thought's progress
from the murky depths of deism
into the daylight of knowledge
happened on an episode
which cast darkness on
his private horizon
like a cloud

a minor contribution
to the bulky history
of man's fatal errors

for a very long time
the conviction was sustained
that a man carries within him
a plentiful reservoir of blood
a pot-bellied keg
twenty plus liters
—no big deal

this may explain
the flowing descriptions of battles
fields red as coral reefs
pulsing streams of gore
a heaven that repeats
inglorious hecatombs

also the universal
method of healing

the diseased
had their arteries opened

and the precious fluid
was blithely let
into a tin basin

not everyone held out
Descartes mouthed in his agony
Messieurs épargnez—

today we know exactly
that in each human body
hangman or hanged
there swim barely
four or five liters
of what is called
the body's soul

a few bottles of burgundy
a pitcher
a quarter
of a trash can's contents

not much

Mr Cogito
naively wonders
why this discovery
didn't bring about a turn
in the sphere of customs

it should at least incline
to a reasonable frugality

we can't as we used to
squander it prodigally
on war's killing fields
on sites of execution

there's truly not much
less than water or oil
our sources of energy

but it has happened otherwise
base conclusions were drawn

instead of restraint
improvidence

precise measurement
strengthened nihilists

gave tyrants new scope
they now know for sure
a human being is fragile
easily drained of blood

four or five liters
a negligable sum

the triumph of science
has not fed us in spirit
nor offered a principle
of action a moral norm

it's a meager consolation
Mr Cogito is thinking

that researchers' efforts
alter nothing in its course

and barely weigh as much
as the inspiration of a poet

blood
swims on

crosses the body's horizon
the borders of imagination

—looks like there'll be a flood

 

Sunday
early afternoon
a hot day

years ago
in far-off California—

there was nothing
tying him to Maria
whose narrow life
can't be woven in
an epic's tapestry

here is her outline history
mundane
and slightly banal

at the time
when the usurper Vladimir Ilyich
wiped out the anointed Nicholas
Maria hid away
across an ocean

swapped willows
for palm trees

she waited on
White émigrés
in the aroma of her native tongue
and pancakes cucumbers borscht

her odd ambition was
to wash dinner plates
for men of noble birth

if not a prince
at least a baron
if need be the widow
of an officer of the guard

she showed more tact
than a certain Svetlana

the note in the
Voice of the Pacific
is adorned with a photograph
of the deceased

a robust
woman
hewn from strong timber
stands
in front of a wall

her hand holds
a leather object

something between
a lady's
necessaire
and a mailman's bag

Mr Cogito's attention
is drawn
not to Maria's Asiatic face
or her tiny little bear's eyes
the sturdy silhouette of a one-time dancer
but above all
that fiercely clutched
leather object

what
was she
carrying
across wildernesses
urban wastelands
forests
mountains
valleys

—Petersburg nights
—a Tula samovar
—an Old Church Slavonic songbook
—a stolen silver soup ladle

with the tsarina's monogram
—a tooth of Saint Cyril
—war and peace
—a pearl dried in herbs
—a lump of frozen earth
—an icon

no one will know
she took the bag
with her

now
the earthly remains
of Maria Rasputin
daughter of the last demon
of the last of the Romanovs
lie in an American cemetery

unmourned
by church bells
a priestly bass

what is she doing
in such an unsuitable place
reminiscent of some picnic
a happy holiday of the dead
or the pale pink
final round of a pastry competition