Wheel With a Single Spoke (14 page)

prey of selected words, –

with a falcon on the last syllable

He, he rejoiced to feel

he is feed

he is food . . .

That's why he

stretched himself over time

skewered

and the hotter it burned

outside,

the more astoundingly he ripened

inside

From him rose

like smoke from an offering

un-understandable words

like these:

Lord God

helm of wisdom

sword of power . . .

Sometimes I talk to your face,

a high wall, made of stone

that disappears lazily into clouds.

I shout every noun

I have ever known.

I pluck seconds from the hour

and present them, still beating,

in the agreeable shape of silence

I witness the fate of every planet.

The high wall, made of stone,

opens a great blue eye

then shuts.

To see if I could see

I put long bird

claws, like lashes,

on my antic eyelid.

And a bull's thick bellow

bedded within my brow

just above my vision,

straight, Chaldean.

– Heeyy, what do you see? tell us, tell us!

– I see words.

– Say what they are, say what!

(Underneath the skylarks, I remain as quiet as before.)

A mute comes to me and asks:

– What?

– Water!

– What?

– Whoy!

Stadium empty, benches bent under bitter light,

wrapped in rain.

One player looks alive, lying on the track.

A line of snails slides from his sleeve

and over the grieving grass.

A wheel with handles

floats at an angle over the leafy peaks.

Another player looks alive,

he lies in a circle around a ball

like the rings of Saturn.

But who will kick the ball

with rings and everything, over the rain?

We will have to bring buckets of lime

and a lot, a lot of chalk.

Night will fall before then,

the locker room has risen to the sky.

The other team has disappeared.

A single shoe lies near us,

cleats up:

you could drink from it, have a nip,

but their mouths and white teeth

have disappeared, unsated

into the dark.

Evening falls over the tennis players.

Beyond the fence was dark.

A young girl with legs up to her neck

flutters after an enchanting ball.

I picked a dog up courteously,

and decapitated

it with a single blow. The body

nudged its departed head.

Forward, forward, forward . . .

At the edge of the table, the head fell.

Body up, head down.

What it became, it could not tell.

Give me the racket. Bam! The barking head flies

over the court, while evening begins.

Behind me, the god with a single eye

grimaces and pulls my shins . . .

my arm, shoulder, shadow,

my farewell, my fare, my well,

my fa and re and we and ll . . .

It offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.

I offered it a hand like a leaf with teeth.

It offered me a branch like an arm.

I offered it an arm like a branch.

It leaned its trunk toward me

like an apple tree.

I leaned my shoulder toward it

like a knotty trunk.

I heard its sap beat

tapping like blood.

It heard my slowing blood rise like sap.

I passed through it.

It passed through me.

I became a single tree.

It

a single he.

We crown the bones

with the halo of the body.

The right of the firstborn.

The secondborn is left

just the nervous waves

of the spirit.

The secondborn is left

just the beating gong

of words.

The secondborn is left

just the creation of the world

without the world.

He looks just like

the firstborn.

Thus, his

hand holds a mirror.

I.

Because my father and because my mother,

because my older sister and because my younger sister,

because my father's various brothers and because my mother's

various sisters,

because my sisters' various lovers,

imagined or real,

because poor relatives and rich relatives,

because they were all there in my childhood home,

they were all there, only and all for me,

because they all had just woken up

and you could tell,

because they all had faces like they'd just woken up

and you could tell,

you could tell they were there for me,

there in the house where I was born

only a few decades ago,

because they were all there to see me,

to see how I'd act, how I'd react,

but even more than that, how I would prepare to be,

and not wanting to be outdone

I brought all I could with me.

What did I bring?

My translucent pride of lions.

What was it like, my translucent pride of lions?

As so:

like jade,

a white cloud,

soft glass.

They looked as if you could see through them.

Through them, you couldn't see a thing.

They were as big as buffalo.

Surely as big as buffalo

since their manes brushed my hips.

They were animals, but you could wear them like guns.

Just how could you wear them like guns?

Like this: one put a translucent paw on the left

and right side of my chest,

his translucent tongue licked my sweaty face,

his translucent tongue licked my sternum.

May my mother be my witness:

the lion licked me out of love, and tore my shirt and broke

my rib.

My mother will swear it happened,

because she brought me a new shirt of skin

with a red wound blooming on the shoulder.

And she brought me a new rib,

to replace the broken old one.

My mother will swear,

because when my mother made me,

she made me smart, with spare parts.

What did she make spare?

First, she made two of the earth I walk on.

If the earth breaks beneath me

my mama sets another under my soles

prepared ahead of time

and also tested beforehand, conditioned

for various cosmic uses.

Another transparent lion hangs from me

with the piquant smell of a man's underarm,

like a transparent gun

shooting transparent screams.

Not invisible, because you can see through the invisible.

Transparent, because you can't see through the transparent,

as the transparent is memory, mourning

all that is invisible.

In front of my kith and kin I came

with a transparent pride of lions

on its way to combat invisibility.

The lions rubbed against one another like flames.

There were only men among us friends:

not one lioness with us, not one star.

I stopped in the middle of the yard of the house where I was born.

My relatives all rose into the sky

and sat, white and shining,

like the peak of a new moon

white and glimmering

in a sky without clouds.

The crowd of transparent lions closed in around me.

I laughed, to reassure my relatives,

and they droned timidly,

and thus night began with a meteor shower.

I asked for a cigarette, and my father pulled down a ray of sun to light it.

He came himself, because he wanted to say something to me alone,

something the others wouldn't hear.

I signaled with the heart of the surrounding transparent lions.

All of them, the lugs, orbited me like a ring of Saturn

moving silently,

and they sat around me like

they should, because on the shield of Achilles were

set the seasons, when Thetis, his mom,

gave him the red-hot shield,

burning the skin of his fingers,

just out of Vulcan's oven.

Talking to you, my spirit shook.

My father told me what he had to say:

only I heard.

None of you heard what he said.

Nor you.

I let the lions go back to the way they had been.

I bared my teeth and shouted:

– The time when Achilles carried a shield has passed.

In the meantime, I finished the cigarette,

my silver relatives shouted in the sky;

you could pluck the tails of falling stars

with their encouragement,

like a harp.

A translucent lion began to lick my right kneecap.

I liked how it tickled.

That's why he licked my kneecap,

to make me smile at my relatives.

II.

And finally he came.

He was delicate and very young.

He was full of goodwill.

And it didn't at all seem he wanted

to confront me.

All the more so, as he seemed to be crying.

His bones were thinner than my bones.

The skin on him was less loved than the skin on me.

He came by himself.

Timid.

Limping from great loneliness.

He shouted in the voice of a young man in love.

He shouted, taking care to choose his sounds.

Suddenly his shout transformed into a greeting.

Thus did he greet me:

– Through that porthole I saw myself on the other planet.

it was unusually frightening,

it was a nightmare.

A single planet, full of wounds,

celestial wounds, uninfected.

– So, you see, I came back, he told me,

and you, why confront me at any cost,

and you, why greet me with translucent lions,

and you, he said, leaning toward my ear,

you especially, why come with all of your relatives

on the planet?

He was unusually melancholic,

strangely cold,

and the whole time

he caused me an odd regret