Wheel With a Single Spoke (7 page)

all other bones are skulls of our ancestors.

Our spines scream within us,

they yearn to yank themselves out and run to the sea,

to the edge of the sea they yearn to run,

passionate for ships

insane with longing for masts.

A soldier hanging by his hands

from the edge of a cloud . . .

From his boots, by clenched hands

hangs another soldier. From his boots

another, then another, then another and another,

and so on into the middle of the earth.

I would like to slide down that line

like a rope,

and as I slid, their belt

buckles would scratch my face.

And as I slid, they would scratch my chest

and as I slid, as I slid, they would tear

off strips of flesh,

and as I slid, as I slid, I would become

a skeleton.

When I finally finished, I would lay my head

on a stone.

While I slept, the torn-off strips

would come back down and wrap around me.

Eventually, my blood would flow back

along with my pain.

I open my eyes and look around.

The column of soldiers is gone.

The wind, probably, pushed it

and the cloud somewhere else.

When I opened my eyes, I was

set inside this body you see,

found guilty for the way I was,

guilty as a leaf for being green.

And suddenly I began to sense

the pace of screams and light

and feel the dolorous curve of dawn

and every tree, alive.

To shout when pecked by darting birds,

to burn when hit by a meteorite,

to sleep along the necks of swans,

and, struck by oars, to die.

O, each syllable is my elephant tusk,

its ivory inverted at midday,

and mythic, frozen letters

reform in each delirious gaze.

Smelling a flower is

a most shameful act . . .

It's like sticking your nostrils into your

own mother.

O, poor species,

O, sad, unstable form, vertebrate or not.

Smelling a flower is like

an involuntary rape

of volition.

It's like

letting spring affect you

not in winter but on the moon.

Old men, young men, adolescents,

who think they can handle it,

the grandchildren of Oedipus,

dirty progenitors

of the death of their own genesis,

they believe

that burying your nostrils inside a flower is an

action

worthy of their body's privacy . . .

Smelling a flower is an act

of incest.

Son of the father,

father of that which is –

they who believe that death itself

is a privilege their brutal natures enjoy.

O, flower,

sweet-smelling milk of the Mother of God,

stability of still stillness.

Father and Son

multiply by smell,

they rape the sacred

womb of scents.

We, ashamed and ostracized,

our noses broken, we sit up straight

on stone chairs, holding books,

we smell only with our gaze – and that's it,

and ostracized

and spring-bleached, pure

and wise.

Always a cupola,

always another.

Rising like a saint's halo,

or a rainbow, just.

Your upright body. My upright body

posed for a wedding.

A wise priest of air

presents two rings of air.

You raise your left hand, I, my left arm:

we reflect smiles at each other.

Your friends, my friends, weep

tears in syllables from hymns.

We kiss. They take our picture.

Flash. Dark. Flash. Dark.

I bend a knee, I fall on all fours.

Melancholic, I kiss your ankle.

I take you by your shoulder, you by my waist,

and we exit solemnly into winter.

Your friends, my friends, make way.

Two thousand pounds of snow fall over us.

We freeze to death. In spring

only curls adorn our skeletons.

We rushed the pyramids of lime,

but not to make walls – no.

We carried words of this Roman tongue

but not for mouths to speak.

We are, my love, the same.

Only the stones have changed,

only the blades of grass.

The lord of this place is violet, silence,

and carpenter's glue – yes,

to mend our broken arms.

We are, my love, the same

and no one knows – yes,

our souls have returned

from a journey through the world

of pairs, one by one,

tree by tree, blade by blade,

stone by stone.

Don't forget how closely bound I am to you

and don't abandon me,

all of you, constant, forever,

you all but me,

constant, forever.

O landscapes, don't abandon me,

I am blind, and I can hear.

Nor you, tender silks,

touched

by one without arms,

though a man, identical

to the statue unearthed from deep in the planet,

Venus de Milo . . .

My empty eye socket beds

the mummified pharaoh.

For some time, I've been looking

for a kind of pyramid unseen,

where invisible slaves lost

their lives, too transparent,

almost invisible.

Don't forget how closely bound I am to you

and don't abandon me.

My power to not be is so great

my footprints give birth to a cone,

to a mouth with white fangs, for sucking.

And there they fall –

the Seen, Heard, Disgusted, Touched,

like into hunger, unending and deep

into my stomach, nudged and tugged

over to where

the Infinite found its center.

How it snows. It snows fish eyes,

snake eyes, dog eyes.

It snows so hard the walls become unnatural,

masterless and blind.

It snows. And the eyes burst, leaving behind

glimpses of stones, sea scenes,

instances of the world beyond itself,

shrunk, fleeting.

It snows. Round pupils, square, triangular,

crooked, smooth,

they freeze in colorless icicles,

they hang from gutters, roofs . . .

Eyes rolling in the sewers. Scooped with wooden shovels

to clear the street.

Eyes, ice balls. Eyes, snowmen.

Eyes below the sled that passes solemn, jingling.

Eyes dilate. Ever more, until they burst.

Eyes with black pupils suddenly wide,

large as the windows where the moon beats down,

eyes wide as the wall. It snows. Eyes like towers. Eyes like winter.

An angel passed,

seated on a black chair,

passed through the air, quiet

and proud.

From my window, I watched

how it passed as though walls were smoke.

Receive one word from me, I called,

you, O angel, from heaven impelled

by a wind roused by the force

of an even greater thought.

But the angel kept silent,

seated on a black chair, reading

an ancient book with a glistening

silver cover, and many pages.

It passed through the new apartment block.

It passed through the brass

gas stations

abstract, divine.

Receive, O angel, I called

the cup from which I drink this wine.

This salt, receive from me, and bread . . .

Night falls heavy against my ribs.

But the angel kept silent, passing

through the tile stove in my room.

On a black chair it sat, reading

a thick book with silver scales.

When it was right in front of me, I called,

O angel come from heaven,

let me hang

from your chair, from your arm.

I just caught the leg

of the chair and latched on to its flight.

I flew with the angel

through air and walls,

dangling like a butterfly in flight,

like the silk of a conquered flag!

And I battered against roofs,

through green and tangled branches,

and I hit tall pillars

and cables and corners and wires . . .

I fought free and fell

into the square at night, quiet.

Oh, it flew away

through air and walls

holding a book, reading

with unbridled passion.

Oh, it went away and I

only wanted to see it more, through the night.

. . . But it slid further and further off

from heaven impelled by a wind

or perhaps by the force

of an even greater thought.

I move and all things flap their wings;

the stone wings of stones

beat so slowly,

I can pluck out bits of quartz

like feathers of pain.

It turns out that only the wings of stones interest me

because they beat very slowly,

because they beat inside themselves,

which is at the same time inside time.

Here are chambers, halls, colors,

and throne rooms.

The bird king has no wings.

He does not fly, because one can fly

and flap one's wings only through him.

Through the arteries of the bird king

migrate cranes and flocks of wild ducks.

A migration from elbow to shoulder.

The tropical meridian

is nothing but his eyebrow.

But the Equator, ah, the Equator!

Here, on rocks where everything is tough,

where time can be touched,

where the past seems not to exist,

where the future cannot be imagined,

is the throne room.

Here is the bird king –

blind, mute.

He is deaf, he limps,

he is unfed, undrunk,

unled, unborn.

He is unsane, unwise,

unhappy,

unnecessary, unborn.

He is unreliable, uncouth,

unhappy, undignified,

unseen, unheard,

untasted, untouched,

unborn.

He is unthinkable, unimaginable, undreamable, unasleep.