The Collected Poems (21 page)

I don't know—my friend—and that's why
I send you these owl's riddles in the night
a warm embrace

 

Mr Cogito
can be proud of himself

he passed the life span
of many other animals

a coffin shared with an elephant
is not a prospect terrible to him

he doesn't crave the longevity
of the parrot
or the
Hippoglossus vulgaris

or for that matter
the soaring eagle
the armored turtle
the fatuous swan

to the end
Mr Cogito would like to praise
the beauty of what is transient

that's why he doesn't lap up
gelée royale
or drink elixirs
doesn't make a pact with Mephistopheles

with the care of a good gardener
he cultivates wrinkles in his face

he obediently receives calcium
being deposited in his arteries

he rejoices in memory's gaps
memory used to torment him

from infancy
immortality
induced in him a state
of
tremendum

envy the gods for what?

 

No surprise
that she isn't the true bride
of real men

generals
power brokers
despots

for centuries she has stalked them
that whimpering old maid
in her hideous Salvation Army hat
reminding them

dragging from the attic
a portrait of Socrates
a cross made of dough
old words

—but all around glorious life runs riot
blushing like a slaughterhouse at dawn

she can almost be laid to rest
in a little silver case
of innocent keepsakes

she is getting smaller
like a hair in the throat
like buzzing in the ear

My God
if she were just a little younger
a little prettier

went with the spirit of the times
rocked her hips
to the rhythm of the latest music

maybe then real men
would start fancying her
generals power brokers despots

if she took care of herself
looked halfway attractive
like Liz Taylor
or the Goddess of Victory

but she gives off
a smell of mothballs
she purses her lips
repeats the great—No

intolerable and stubborn
comical as a scarecrow
like an anarchist's dream
like the lives of the saints

 

Metamorphoses down to the sources of history
of childhood's paradise lost in a drop of water

beneficent spirits please do not spurn us
we've wandered too long across oceans and stars
take us wearied beyond our strength into the fold

 

So many miracles
in Mr Cogito's life
caprices of fortune
flights and falls
eternity will likely
be bitter for him

without travel
friends
books

on the other hand
time in abundance
like a tuberculosis patient
an emperor in banishment

he will probably sweep
purgatory's great square
or languish at the mirror
of an empty barbershop

without a pen
ink
parchment

without childhood memories
without universal history
or a guidebook to birds

like all the others
he will enroll in

courses on kicking
his earthly habits

the recruiting commission
works quite meticulously

eradicates the senses left
to candidates for heaven

Mr Cogito will defend himself
he will put up fierce resistance

he will most easily give up smell
he always used it with moderation
he never followed anyone's tracks

he will also render without regret
the taste of food
the taste of hunger

on the recruiting commission's desk
he will lay out the petals of his ears

in his temporal existence
he was a lover of silence

he will merely
explain to stern angels
that his sight and touch
prefer not to leave him

that he still feels in his flesh
all the earthly thorns
shudders
caresses
flames
lashes of the sea

that he can still see
a pine on a hill slope
dawn's seven candlesticks
a stone with blue veins

he will submit to all tortures
to gentle persuasion
but to the end he will defend
the splendid sensation of pain

and a couple of faded images
in the pit of a burned-out eye

who knows
he may manage
to convince the angels
that he is unfit
for heavenly
service

and they will let him return
along an overgrown path
on the shore of a white sea
to the cave of the beginning

 

Years are shorter and shorter
     priests of the temple of Ammon
discovered that the Eternal Lamp burns less oil each year
that means the world is contracting
   space time and people

Plutarch passed on the priests' observation no doubt
provoking angry growls in circles of philosophy
for driven to despair by the mutability of humankind
they would like the cosmos to serve as our example

However the proof of the lamp absurd though it seems
accords with the experiences of those who abandoned
inns stations houses and crossed the stream of illusion
and now go down a gentle slope there where we all go

They know

Each year the Eternal Lamp burns less oil

So the good universe lays us down to sleep

 

With that little boy unmoving like the Eleatic arrow
that boy in the high grass I have nothing in common
apart from a date of birth and the lines on our palms

my father took the picture before the second Persian war
I deduce from the leafage and clouds that it was August
birds and crickets sounded it smelled of grain of fullness

at the bottom the river called Hypanis on Roman maps
a watershed and near thunder told us to flee to the Greeks
their colonies on the seaside were not all that far away

the boy is smiling trustfully the only shadow he knows
is the shadow of a straw hat of a pine tree of the house
and if any glow in the sky then the glow of the sunset

 

When years later I returned to Babylon it had changed
the girls I once loved the numbers of the subway lines
I waited by the phone the sirens were stubbornly silent

so art's solace—Petrus Christus's portrait of a young lady
grew flatter and flatter tucked in its wings to go to sleep
lights of the city and of annihilation drew near each other

the festival of the Apocalypse processions of the usurper
The sybil absolved drunken crowds worshippers of plenty
God's trampled body was dragged in triumph in the dust

thus
finimondo
is fulfilled Etruscan tables were crammed
celebrating in wine-stained shirts unconscious of their fate
the barbarians will arrive at the end to slash their aortas

 

It is said of me
that Nature conceived
but never finished me
like a sculpture set aside
a sketch
an epic's damaged fragment

for years I played the fool
—idiots have a safer life
I bore offenses sanguinely
if I were to sow all the pits
that they spat in my face
an olive grove would rise
a spacious oasis of palms

I received an all-round education
Livy the orators the philosophers
I spoke Greek like an Athenian
but resembled Plato
only lying down

I completed my education
in lupanars dockside taverns
O unwritten dictionaries of vulgar Latin
and you plumbless vaults of debauchery and licence

after Caligula's murder
I hid behind a curtain
dragged out by force
I didn't manage to muster a wise mien
when the world was thrown at my feet
nonsensical and flat

from that time I became the most diligent
emperor in the history of the world
a Heracles of bureaucracy
I remember with pride
a liberal decree
which sanctioned the release of stomach sounds
during banquets

I reject the frequent charge of cruelty
in fact it was nothing but distraction

on the day of Messalina's violent death
I admit—the poor girl was put to death on my orders
I asked in the middle of a feast—where is the Missus
a gravelike silence came as the answer
I had truly forgotten

It happened that I would invite
dead people to a game of dice
I punished absence with a fine
overextended by so many tasks
I may have mixed up the details

it seems
I ordered the execution
of thirty-five senators
and three centurions on horseback
so what

a little less purple
a few gold rings less
but also—no small thing—
more room in the theater

no one wanted to see
the operations had a sublime purpose
I wished to get people accustomed to death
dull its edge
reduce it to banal and everyday dimensions
like minor depression or the common cold

here I offer as proof of
my delicacy of feeling
that I removed the statue of gentle Augustus
from the execution square
to spare the tender marble
the braying of the condemned

I devoted nights to study
wrote a history of the Etruscans
a history of Carthage
a bit piece on Saturn
an introduction to game theory
a treatise on snake poisons

It was I who saved Ostia
from an invasion of sand
I laid swamps dry
built aqueducts
from that time it was easier
to wash off blood in Rome

I extended the Empire's frontiers
to include Britannia Mauretania
and Thrace I believe

my death was caused by my wife Agrippina
and an unrestrained passion for boletus mushrooms
the essence of forests became the essence of death

remember—O posterity—with fit honor and gratitude
at least one achievement of the divine Claudius
I added new symbols and sounds to the alphabet
extended the frontiers of speech i.e. the frontiers of freedom

the letters I invented—my beloved daughters Diagamma Antisigma
led my shade
when I set out with a faltering step for the murky realms of Orcus

 

The lucky Saint George
could judge the dragon's
strength and movements
from his knightly saddle

strategy's first principle
size up the enemy well