Wheel With a Single Spoke (6 page)

and draws everything into itself and suddenly

into an embrace so powerful

that through its arms leaps movement.

III.

I will run, therefore, in every direction

at once,

I will run after my own heart,

like a chariot

simultaneously pulled in every direction

by whipped horses.

IV.

I will run until advance, until rush

itself passes me

and pulls further ahead of me

like the fruit's skin from its seed,

until running

will run even within itself, and be still.

And I will collapse

over it like a young man

onto his lover.

V.

And once I have let running

pass me by,

once

movement within itself is still

like stone, or

better, like mercury

behind the glass

of a mirror,

I will see inside all things,

I will embrace them with myself,

all things at once,

and they

will throw me back, once

all that was thing in me

has been changed, over time, into things.

VI.

See me

remaining what I am,

with flags of loneliness, with shields of chill,

back toward myself I run,

pulling myself from everywhere,

pulling myself from myself before,

behind myself, on my right and

my left, above and

underneath myself, departing from

everywhere and giving to

everywhere signs that will bring me to mind:

to the sky – stars,

the earth – air,

shadows – branches and budding leaves.

VII.

. . . odd body, asymmetrical,

surprised by itself

in the presence of spheres,

surprised to stand before the sun,

waiting patiently for light to grow

a body to fit.

VIII.

To keep yourself with your own earth

when you are a seed, when winter

liquefies its white, long bones

and spring arises.

To keep yourself with your own land

when, O human, you are alone, when you are battered

by unlove,

or simply when winter

decomposes and spring

moves its spherical space

like the heart

from itself toward the edge.

To enter purely into the labor

of spring,

to tell seeds they are seeds,

to tell earth it is earth!

But first of all,

we are the seeds, we are

those seen from all sides at once,

as though we lived inside an eye,

or a field, where instead of grass

gazes grow – and we

suddenly hard, almost metallic,

cut the blades down with ourselves, so they

will be like every thing

among which we live

and to which

our heart gave birth.

But first of all,

we are the seeds and we prepare

within ourselves to throw ourselves into something

much higher, into something

that has the name of spring . . .

To be inside phenomena, always

inside phenomena.

To be a seed and keep yourself

with your own earth.

Raid on the interior of stones,

on fixed formations.

I pray for boredom, spleen,

for movement so slow

a city could encompass the wooden solemnity

of a chessboard,

and sounds would make such spheres that

a hand could pluck them from the air,

and flying arrows would trail lazy spiders fluttering

in the shimmering geometry of their nets.

I pray for boredom,

the blade of grass somehow I pray

will not emerge from itself,

but adhere to its own monotony,

like seconds to hours and hours to time.

Apples I pray, on my knees

before the shadow of apples, will stay

unseparated from apples;

and my blood-marked head I batter against the rain's thunder,

to show it should follow

more closely the mindless zigzags

of lightning.

I pray the sun to stay round,

I pray the moon to stay far away

and lifeless,

I pray it will keep its circles just the same

and not change them into purple tentacles,

and hang like a jellyfish, dead, in space.

I pray for boredom, spleen,

to myself I pray, for boredom,

never sure how to set

my heart aside, a foreign planet within me

that I enclose like petrified air.

Raid on set destinies,

on clean formations:

I pray for boredom, spleen . . .

Because I walk on you,

you are covered in footprints.

My soles are worn through.

We only lose touch when I jump

or you cave in.

Where I end, you begin.

Glassy white with phantoms.

They reveal themselves: angels descend,

crystals rise.

Day descends upon night,

a continuous sunrise

over various planets.

I don't know if it's hot out or cold.

I don't even know if we are alone.

Something, I don't know what, passes.

I look up,

as you do, and you reveal yourself, suspended.

I hold out my hands and walk my palms over you.

Where I end, you rise,

I hang from you like a long seed pod

Underneath, far below, the whipped horses run.

If I let go, I'll fall onto a saddle.

But I won't.

If I stay as I am any longer,

I will either freeze or catch fire.

But I won't.

I close my eyes: only the interior is revealed.

That is, blackness, that is, purpleness.

I close my eyelids down to my feet,

as though I were an eye.

That's it, obviously, I'm an eye.

But in whose socket?

You might think I was a tree.

A tree has many arms,

and I, many arms:

two visible, a thousand invisible.

When the wind blows, its arms rustle;

I like to believe that when I move

my arms are stirred by a

breeze uncanny.

You might think I was a tree;

each of my words is a leaf.

This comparison pleases me.

It's how you know I'm old.

When I was young, I compared myself to an Indian god,

one with many arms, many legs.

I liked to say that lots of my arms and legs

had been snapped off and that

I ended up with just two arms, on

the right side,

and just two legs,

also on the right side.

So when I ran, I made a circle.

Then a spiral.

Now that I'm old,

I like to compare myself to a tree.

I think I move my arms and legs

beaten by a wind, uncanny,

and I am happy

with this comparison.

Soon, I won't compare myself to anything,

my arms or legs won't move,

and my words

won't look like leaves.

I will be given permission,

by friends and enemies, to change planets.

Just like that, and I will prepare, for no reason,

to compare myself to something utterly utterly other –

and when I get old again –

with another utterly

utterly other something.

Then I will change planets again

and so on, and so on,

what monotony, God Almighty!

A sleep with saws inside

decapitates horses.

They neigh blood and run

down the street, like red tables fleeing

the Last Supper.

And the horses run, in red clouds,

and clatter their shadows. Ghosts in the saddles.

Leaves stick to their throats

or fall straight through,

like the shadow of a tree falls down a well.

Bring the buckets, bring the glass goblets,

bring goblets and mugs,

bring helmets left over from the war,

bring whoever has one eye missing,

or an empty spot for an arm

where he can be topped off.

Everywhere, blood runs from headless horses,

runs wherever it wants,

and I, the first to see

all this,

may inform you that I drank some

and it was very, very good . . .

And now, friends, our spine grumbles

while pulling its paws from our flesh

and tries to run off on its own

to the edge of the sea.

Such passion for ships.

Such drive for masts.

It wants itself alone, for itself,

our flesh is not its problem.

It licks itself white,

with a tongue of memories.

Nothing is its problem,

it lends itself of its own free will –

to birds, dog, or dolphin,

disturbing itself,

untamed by guns

or bridles

or tons of water above.

Each of its bones is a skull,

its vertebrae are skulls

that think of the whip's tail,

the lash, the harness,

its ribs are stretched-out skulls

that think of horizons, embraces,

graces,

O, each bone is a skull,

only skulls are true bones.

O, each bone is a skull

that's lost its mind

taking ownership, instead of

the earthy and watery parts of the world.

Impatient are they within us,

O friends, our spines,

they want to leap out, friends,

they want to encircle

in vertebrae

one brain apiece.

Bones cannot be bones anymore,

they can't be ribs, tibia, or femurs anymore,

they are fed up with being the phalange,

sternum, clavicle,

they all want to be skulls.

They are in fact the skulls

of our ancestors

decapitated within us

ground up within us, drowned within us

hanged within us.

They are the skulls of our ancestors

and they fight among themselves

for the right to be a skull.

They are the skulls of our ancestors

condemned to be a kneecap, or an ankle.

O friends, what is ours is only the forehead,