Wheel With a Single Spoke (3 page)

II.

A rush of white clouds, a rush of long clouds
drove each second.
In earthshaken February,
a woman gave birth into the world,
her son receiving his right to time.

She shot into the air
the stone arrow
of a scream.

The child's body rose

heavy and sure, like the moon,

from seawater.

And a horizon appeared, of women

who covered the globes of their earthly bellies

with black aprons.

A horizon appeared, of pregnant women

who gazed upon her.

A woman gave birth into the world.

In February, under the wheel of freezing wind,

birth pains embraced her,

like a man much too strong,

with arms of lead.

A rush of white clouds, a rush of long clouds
drives each second, strikes them,
thins them . . .

A second may meander

through forges, cables,

walls, along railways it meanders

it finds a woman's eye and shines through,

it finds a woman's cheek and colors it,

it finds a woman's mouth and makes it arc,

it finds a woman's scream and makes it into

a pillar of the sky.

And a horizon appeared, of women

who covered the globes of their earthly bellies

with black aprons.

A horizon appeared, of pregnant women

who gazed upon her.

The child's body, heavy and sure

continued to rise

like a heart drumming,

like a planet breaking away

from a sun.

In February, under the wheel of freezing wind,
the great flag of snow
fell, dew-wet, to the earth.

And the soldiers' hobnailed boots

tore the flag apart, in rhythm

and iron runners from sleds with

brass bells

sliced the flag into bandages,

for the reddened temples,

battered shoulders,

and gunshot chests

of those who stood guard.

But a woman gave birth into the world.

In February,

her child received

his right to time,

just as great questions receive
their answer
in history.

And a horizon appeared, of women

who covered the globes of their earthly bellies

with black aprons.

A horizon appeared, of pregnant women

who smiled, heavy and trusting.

III.

But then the woman felt
her arms could not hold the boy
any more than yours could lift
a river.

She felt him break away
from her breast
as words do
from the mouth.

The warmth of his being

– she felt –

rose up on the warmth of her body

toward petrified clouds.

And all of this seems

unchangeable,

the way you cannot temper

an event

that took place in the past.

The woman then felt

that her son ran glistening

toward the great toothed wheels

of the seasons,

that he threw his shadow onto them,

whipping them,

that the biting lashes turned the cogs

with a high whistle,

and winter threw its frozen bodies

onto the carcass of spring leaves,

and spring threw its shivering trees

onto the swollen summer ocean,

and the sun of summer, slipping, hit

and shook the fruits of autumn loose.

And autumn drove its prow

like an icebreaker

into the white quick of winter,

and parted and crushed

and shattered and broke it.

The woman shot a glistening
arrow into the air,
a cry of joy
for her son.

February watched over him.

It touched his white and shining shoulder

like one who draws sound

from a harp,

and truly, there he was.

Its hands caressed him, its sight,

hearing, smell, taste,

its everything at once,

and he was alive and unhurt.

February watched over him.

And embraced him

the way the heart does its blood

and the mind ideas, so was he, complete,

and he received his natural right

to time,

the way the open eye receives

the face of things that laugh or cry.

February watched over him.

The young soldiers sit in a glass case

the way they were found, shot in the forehead,

so they could be seen, they sat in a glass case,

holding their last movements,

the profile, arm, knee, their last movements,

when they were shot by surprise in the forehead

or between the shoulder blades with a flame more fragile

than the finger of a child pointing at the moon.

They left behind an empty barracks

that smelled like ankle-wraps, cigarette butts, like a closed window.

Wooden suitcases filled the barracks

and rattled their iron handles

like the moon rattles its iron handles

just before it's opened

to look for the old letters and old photographs

of time.

The young soldiers were smeared with wax

on their faces and hands, to shine,

rubbed with wax to shine, rubbed with wax,

and set exactly as they were the moment

when life broke and death swallowed the moment.

They are still, never not shining,

and we look at them like we might look at a moon

rising from the middle of the square.

For our sake, now that we are the same age,

even though they've spent many years inside the case,

for our sake, we who have caught up with and passed them,

who have a heart that beats, and memory,

a fresh, utterly fresh memory,

the young soldiers sit in a glass case

and mock each other constantly

as though they were alive.

from the E
PIC OF
G
ILGAMESH

I.

Look at your hands and rejoice, for they are absurd.

And look at your feet, in the evening, as you stand straight

and hang toward the moon.

I may be too close for you to see me,

but even this is not nothing.

I will become distance, to fit your eyes,

or a word, with sounds the size of ants,

to fit your mouth.

Touch your ear and laugh and wonder at your touch.

I ache, even in the brief transit.

I stretched my gaze until it hit a tree,

and there it was!

Look at my shoulders, and tell yourself they are the

strongest you've seen, aside from grass and bison,

who are like that for no reason.

My shoulders shift distance, like a leather bag

pushed by a windmill.

This is why when lights I have not touched

burn the backs of my eyes

a gentle blue pain passes above the crown of my head

in place of the sky.

And if I ache with rivers,

rocks, a length of ocean,

just enough for everything to be my bed,

never enough to fit my thought's

eternal expansion, oh, then there's no way I'll know

how you also ache, and I am not the one

to whom I speak.

II.

So something would exist between us – maybe

me – I baptized what I had done,

wounding myself,

always making myself smaller, always dying,

by words from my own lips.

And the great pain, I called it blue

for no reason, or just because that's how

my lips smiled.

I ask you whether you, smiling,

would call another pain the same?

Surely, the height I threw away from my sight,

like a spear never to return,

you caressed differently, because your hands,

my twins, are absurd, and we should

rejoice in these words passing

from one mouth to another like an invisible river,

for they do not exist.

O, friend, how is your blue?

III.

A game of passes, some fast, some slow,

before my eye and with me creating the

trees, stones, and river,

over my slower body

dragged along by thought, like goats at evening,

by a rope.

Time, alone everywhere, myself,

and after that.

IV.

And when everything is erased, like seas inside a shell,

there's nothing anymore, except in the eyes of those

who are not, the passage of pain into the passages

of time, O, my friend, when I am like someone,

I will not be, because one thing like another

does not exist.

What is unique is in pain, measured like eddies

in the mountains, the passage of time,

knowing it is alone,

changing the names of surrounding things.

V.

Whatever is not limitless is,

it travels everywhere, encountering the wide marks

I call Time.

Whatever is not everywhere is, it swallows

my legs up to the knees, beats the elbow of my heart,

on my mouth it dances.

What is not timeless is, the way a memory is.

Like the vision of hands, it is,

like the hearing of eyes.

VI.

I die with every thing I touch,

with rotating stars, with sight;

with every shadow I cast over the sand,

a little less soul remains, a thought

stretches a bit further; I look

at everything as though I see death, only seldom

do I forget, and then I create dances

and songs from nothing, shrinking myself and pulling out

my throbbing temples, to turn them into crowns of myrtle.

VII.

Come out of the tent, friend, so we can be face-to-face,

can look at each other, be quiet together, always asking

whether the other is,

and how he senses himself.

Game of tumbling, with stones,

shaken out of somewhere, toward somewhere else.

I taught my words to love,

I showed them my heart

and would not give up until their syllables

did not start to beat.

I showed them trees

and what words wouldn't rustle

I hanged, without pity, from the branches.

In the end, words

needed to resemble both me

and the world.

Then

I came to me,

I braced myself between two banks

of a river,

to present a bridge,

a bridge between a bull's horn and grass,

between black stars of light and earth,

between the temple of a woman's head and a man's,

letting words travel over me

like racing cars, electric trains,

only so they could cross faster,