Wheel With a Single Spoke (9 page)

in your face

still makes me redden with embarrassment,

with the guilt

that I knowingly let

the wonderful, unreal, unending earth

become a sphere.

Nothing will ever convince me he has died.

I believe the earth is flat,

flat and thick as a plank,

pierced by tree roots, hanging

into the void, skull and shank,

that the sun doesn't rise in the same place

and it's not always the same sun,

but smaller or bigger,

altogether different, at random.

I believe that when it's cloudy

nothing rises, and I fear the end

of that long line of suns

sliding out of hell toward Eden.

Then I send out homing birds

who scan the water with their eyes,

who tell me where to steer

the fields, to find another sunrise.

Postulate

One thing cannot occupy the same space

at the same time as another
.

apocryphal citation from Euclid

I.

What about the soul and body?

I fall asleep and let my head hang

into the simultaneous world,

removing the weight of my head

from this world

and burdening with its weight

the simultaneous world.

What do you mean, no?!

Why not, why can't they be

at the same time, the same place

two things?

What about the soul and body?

What about the helf and helvol?

II.

Ah, yes, I live in a space

devoid of generosity.

I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,

a sphere.

If I lived on a square, a cube

there'd be some type of plenty,

but I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,

a sphere.

Everything is based on economy.

Maximum of content,

minimum of form.

Freedom is a form.

Content is our own existence.

Everything is based on economy;

the earth is a sphere,

the moon a sphere,

the sun a sphere,

the stars, sublime, are spheres.

I live on a sphere, a sphere.

The earth has mountains,

the moon rings,

the sun spots,

the stars rays,

but only for this world,

mine,

inside their illusion of freedom.

III.

A tree cannot be a tree.

Vegetable vision would be too free.

I don't believe I have two hands and feet.

Corporeal vision would be too free.

Everything is based on economy.

In the simultaneous world, my body

is made of my body

and a branch of a branch

and passing time

of the tramboleen of time.

In the supersimultaneous world

my body and my body

make up my body.

Everything in the same place, simultaneously.

Like teeth that bite

a fiber from one lone world

meet the teeth that bite off

a mouthful from another lone world

that illuminates

the tramboleen

in a sphere, a sphere, a sphere.

IV.

Everything is based on economy.

I can't believe a leaf is just green.

In the simultaneous world it is ahov

and in the other simultaneous world it is sirip

and in the other it is ep

the other it is ip

and in all the others it is as it is

to gather, with all the others in one place,

and give birth to a sphere.

V.

I cross the street.

In the simultaneous world they knock down a wall.

In the simultaneous world, the other one, they just conquered

the tower of Malta,

and in the other, other simultaneous world,

a bomb just exploded.

And in still another world

other than the others,

the ocean

is quiet and windless,

so when I cross the street

and set my foot on things,

in the other simultaneous world,

like Jesus I walk on water.

VI.

I sleep on a bed in an attic,

in the simultaneous world my bed

is half in a wall

half in an engine,

and in the other world, simultaneous, it rains

and mushrooms sprout under my sheet.

In this world there is peace,

in the simultaneous world there is war,

in the other simultaneous world it is spring,

and it is tramboleening

in the other simultaneous world.

VII.

A,

E,

a sound for the mouth made of my mouth

follows.

And then the complement of A

then anti-A

so we can make a sphere, sphere, sphere,

sphere.

VIII.

Ah, body, ah, tree,

ah, grass and green, ah, rabbit,

making us up, gulping us up

wheels with teeth, asymmetrical,

ah, thought.

Only the uneasiness of our gulping,

the upper jaw of tomorrow's god

and the lower jaw of yesterday's god

devours the prey of today . . .

IX.

Euclid, you old inhuman,

you believed there was just one world,

based on inhuman postulates,

you fed humanity

the common sense of stars,

believing nothing was like them.

You brought teeth back from the dead,

but not their bite.

With truths of a moment

you tried to tell us: stop

when the nimbus of the simultaneous world

bloomed on our crowns.

Euclid, you madman,

good man, grand good man,

unmeasured, departed,

and shown to no one,

only the rattling of tooth on tooth

and a sound slipping,

from the son-sphere and the parent

left outside speech.

Left outside freedom,

unsaved,

horrid.

X.

I am arguing with you, Euclid, old man,

the way Job argued with God

when He covered him with sores and boils

just for a bet with the devil,

with whom He makes a sphere.

I am arguing with you, idiotic old man,

with no purpose in life,

freedom and time, hermit,

heavenly among the heavens.

And I cry on your mountainous hand

with long tears like hunting dogs

and I say to you: spheres are not beautiful!

But tell me the truth, do spheres exist?

What are you, A?

you, most human and

absurd letter,

O, you, glorious sound!

With you I struggle,

into you I launch my being

as once the Achaeans did their horse

into Troy.

I will bed you

and want only you,

you slutty enchanter

desperate goddess!

You dance in my mouth

when I die and become like

a soldier pushed up from the back

by grass growing toward the sky;

and I want you to not exist

so I can be free of speech;

imaginary vagina, A, the letter

belly-heavy with all others.

Not to run, but float

to pass through rivers like sun rays

without matter,

banked by deaf ears.

You, taloned music

dragging my body over

words

like a grazing lamb

snatched up by an eagle.

A, you angry ghost,

who are you

and what do you want?

I used to tap my fingernail until

no nail was left,

and my finger until

it wore away.

But a blind man came

to me and said:

– Brother, leave your nail alone,

what if there's an eye

on the tip,

do you want to pop it?

But still, but still

this door between you and me,

someone has to knock it down.

I.

That which is furthest from me,

being closer to me,

is named “you.”

See how I came to wrestle with myself.

In me wrestled “you,”

“you,” eyelid, you wrestled,

you, hand,

you, leg, you wrestled

and though I was lying down, I ran

around and around my name.

Only to myself can I not say “you.”

Everything else, including my soul,

is “you.”

You, O soul.

II.

– You laughed.

I denied it and said:

– No, I didn't.

For I was afraid.

But he said, Yes, you did.

And truly, the name,

leaning

like my body was

his oaken cane,

hurled itself against him,

the one without a name,

the one nothing but body,

against “you,”

the body of all names,

against “you,”

the father of all names.

But he

when the dawn poured forth

stopped thinking of me.

He forgot.

III.

– Change your name, he said.

I responded: I am my name.

– Change your name, he said.

I responded:

– You want me to be someone else,

you want me to be no more,

you want me to die

and be no more.

How can I change my name?

IV.

He said:

– You were born on my lap.

I have known you since you were born.

Do not fear death,

remember how you were

before you were born.

For that is what you will be after you die.

Change your name.

V.

– You cried.

I denied it and said:

– No, I didn't.

For I was afraid.

But he said, Yes, you did,

and stopped thinking of me.

He forgot.

VI.

I am only my name.

The rest is “you,” I told him.

He didn't hear me, for his

mind was elsewhere.

Why else would he have said:

You wrestled the word itself

and won!