Wheel With a Single Spoke (17 page)

This much, forget! Just this, –

that He lived

before our time . . .

Just this much,

I kneel and beg you, to forget.

Glorious times will come

when the cold balance of the stars

will fall apart, and

the lines of those who were

will connect with those who are.

Human, how many bodies has he had

and how many will he yet

try to enter.

Human! how many bodies does he need

to sate himself

on this unstable sphere!

In the end, we will devour

all of this blue earth.

We will chew it, we will chew it up.

We will toss aside its head and bones,

and the Human, the Human unsated,

with a billion bodies

will turn its maw

to the cold balance of the stars.

 

Now you drink alone

from an eye socket

whose broth

you've drained.

Like a mug, you raise

a dog's head.

Cheers! I say, and clink

a cat's head.

You knock back the broth

of the dog's eye socket.

I knock back the broth

of the cat's eye socket.

Then we throw our glasses against the wall.

You raise a lion's head,

I raise a leopard's head,

Cheers! We drink eye-broth of the beasts.

Do not forget: I'm not hungry,

I'm not thirsty.

My point of view is the point of stone.

I am not tired, no, I am not tired

or thirsty

or thinking of reclining

against a crocodile eardrum.

I move like I'd rather stand still,

and though I've had enough of air, I breathe.

No, don't forget, I'm not hungry and

not thirsty,

the same way that I'm not young anymore,

but I'm not old, either.

The morning's soft breeze,

I could choke its soft throat

without working too hard,

and I could kick

the thin river, wild

and utterly fishless.

Right in the river that's no wider than

a dog's tail.

If I decide to do something, I do it.

I have wasted so many days

that spending another one in vain

can't make me any poorer.

No will to survive

Can make me breathe more often

Even death doesn't seem

so grand.

It's good, this solar system,

but no more than that.

It's luminous, this sun,

luminous. Not blinding, not blinding.

If no dawn broke tomorrow

it would be a great loss.

But nothing more than a great loss.

I could whip things but I don't.

Not because I think things

won't be hurt

but because I'd be whipping for no reason.

I won't stick my tongue out at you

so you won't think I want to taste you.

I'm just talking to you.

It's like sticking my tongue out halfway.

If you understand me – great.

Today, so long as you understand me, I'll be happy.

Even delighted.

But only today.

If you don't understand anything, I'll be sad

and toward the end of the evening, – melancholic.

But not past this evening,

because at midnight

an angel is coming.

He will tell me:

– I have come to transform you!

– So transform me, I'll tell him.

And he will, he'll do it.

After that, I'll go over to a horse

and say:

– Horse, I have come to transform you.

– Hee-haa, it will answer,

but I won't know if I should

transform it

or even if it wants me to.

And I will not know whether I am to it

what the angel is to me.

– I have come to transform you, horse.

– Hee-haa, hee-haa, answers the horse.

From that revolting grub

came my will to write poetry.

From that came the habit

of enjoying the fact that my poetry can express

misery.

I was in the army, and being a private

with Private Ionel Vianu,

and being still up during a break,

we escaped from our bunk beds

when look, he

handily found a grub.

It had orange folds, it had

warts, if you can imagine it.

Hairy it was, and it had warts.

Illumined warts . . .

(Here God erased a good line.)

I'd better stop this talking.

But I can't,

I want to justify myself.

Private Ionel Vianu let it run

from one palm into his other,

the revolting grub.

Watching it made me sick

and repulsed when I looked at it

and very very uneasy it made me

and I burped bile, the grub.

The soldier said to me:

– Do you see how it runs from one hand to the other?

Like the stain of a shadow, the soldier said to me.

It ran like a shadow's stain

from one palm to another.

Like the stain of a shadow!

I repeated it, too:

– Like the stain of a shadow.

I utterly hated the grub,

but it ran from one palm into another,

from one of the soldier's palms into the other

like the stain of a shadow.

This is where I get the habit

from loathing for the grub, I get the habit,

the stupid habit of writing poetry.

Like the stain of a shadow,

the soldier told me.

Like the stain of a shadow,

the soldier responded.

I won't say it was lucky

I met you.

I'll only say it was a miracle.

Do your best not to die, my love,

try to not die if you can.

Me, my life is gone,

you, your luck is gone.

I'll say no more than this,

the two of us lived

on a ball of earth.

I want to be him.

He wants to be a tree.

Trees want to be dogs,

dogs want to be birds.

Birds want to be stones,

stones want to be fish.

Fish want to be clouds,

clouds want to be fields.

Fields want to be horses,

horses want to be grass.

I want to be grass.

If stones were bones,

ah, how they'd grow

with budding fingers . . .

If birds were air,

only feathers would I breathe,

only feathers . . .

And if waves

were oceans,

ah, how we would go

ah, look how we would go.

Feelings don't have to be understood, –

just lived.

Pigs don't have to be understood, –

just eaten.

Flowers don't have to be understood, –

just smelled.

That bird doesn't have to be understood, –

leave it alone;

don't make your heart into a branch,

don't drink its air with your breath,

the air below its wings . . .

We don't need above all to understand, –

we just above all must be;

but we above all must have been,

really above all to have been.

It smelled like a corpse from another planet.

Out of the horse's spinal cord

some grass grew, and an egret.

It smelled like a corpse from another planet.

I shoved my heart into a stone

as my mother would plunge her hands into chocolate

when she cooked us air

thinking a bird would suffocate.

She'd tell us a story,

a story about a king

who used sunrays like a cane,

who saw a naked goddess in the light

and suddenly, wham!

Lord, what a smell!

It smelled like a corpse from another planet.

A tender nonbeing protected us like granite.

And all this happened in the time

the wheel had only one spoke

and it wasn't called a wheel,

it was called a line.

If you weren't afraid to be born

you won't be afraid to die.

The lamb is not for eating

or sacrifice.

It is a seed

becoming a ram.

Take the blood-dirty sword out of your tent.

Take the dead man out of your tent.

His flesh is rusting.

The star

smells like a newborn child.

Wash yourself, –

seed and bullet . . .

What the animals left after they ate,

what they let fall out of their behinds, –

that's what you are

and not even.

Phosphorescent snot, you traitor,

snot

you can see in the starless dark

night and day.

No one's neglect are you,

no one's non-desire are you.

To shoot at your own land

without knowing it's your own mother.

You are not excused from this mess,

you stillborn fetus

by the sword the virgins pissed on.

Your weapon is the stain of light.

The mercy of spilled blood

will never adorn you.

We curse you:

May you be held by your own crime,

may you hold in your arms the rotting

dog of my heart.

May you never take part in death.

When you are thirsty

may you suck on a gravestone

the eye of a dead child.

Fire will be your shadow,

cold will be your fire!

May you burn without death,

you

who shoots his own land,

even if you didn't know it was your mother.

May you survive your sin!

May you crave milk,

and drink stones.

. . . And may the gentleness you ruined

make you gentle and fresh as a blade of grass,

unhappy soldier, Daddy's

dear and beloved,

Daddy's little soldier,

dear and tragic and beloved.

I am nothing but

a bloodstain