Wheel With a Single Spoke (4 page)

only so they would learn to transport the world,

from itself,

to itself.

A chariot whistles across the field

of my moments.

Four horses pull two warriors.

One has his eyes on leaves, the other,

his eyes in tears.

One lodges his heart ahead, in the horses,

the other drags it behind, over stones.

One holds reins in his right hand,

the other, sadness in his arms.

One is beset by his weapons,

the other by his memories.

A chariot whistles across the field

of my moments.

Four black horses pull two warriors.

One lodges his life in eagles,

the other in the tumbling wheels,

and the horses run, until their muzzles shatter

the moment,

they run beyond, they run far beyond

and vanish.

Savonarola came to me and said:

Let's burn all the trees on the bonfire of vanities,

let's burn all the grass, wheat, and corn,

and make everything a little simpler.

Let's shatter the rocks, let's pluck

the rivers from their beds and make

everything simpler, a lot simpler.

Let's renounce our legs,

for walking is vanity.

Let's renounce our sight,

for the eye is vanity.

Let's renounce our hearing,

for the ear is vanity.

Let's renounce our hands

and make everything simpler,

a lot simpler!

Savonarola came to me in a dream,

like a scar deep in the brain of the world.

He came to me in a dream

and I woke up shouting and screaming.

Again, we are ourselves no more,

we know no more where we begin

nor where we end, in given space,

placed on the pillar of these seconds.

Again, our bodies shaped in bas-relief

exist out from us, that is,

just one half of us can move,

that side turned to the world.

Again, all is centered on the eye,

the brow, just the cheek,

just the arm outstretched is all,

whatever else will cease to be.

Inscribed within a circle,

we know no more where we begin

nor where we end, in given space,

placed on the pillar of these seconds.

The present is made only of memories.

What was, no one truly knows.

The dead constantly trade

names, numbers, one, two, three . . .

There is only what will be,

only happenings yet unhappened,

hanging from an unborn branch

half a phantom . . .

There is only my frozen body,

final, stony, and feeble.

My sadness hears how unborn dogs

bark at unborn people.

Only they will truly be.

We who live these moments,

we are a nighttime dream,

a svelte, scampering millipede.

listed the demented skiff,

depending on how I embraced you,

or on the smell of algae or mint.

It scribed a flashing alphabet,

in cuttlefish, water, and gar.

Its words were only four:

I am, you are . . .

And gallantly they seemed to drown

in the glare, monotonous, bland,

or lazily through lazy clouds

they crossed the Flying Dutchman . . .

Beloved zigzag, almost dreamed,

with sargasso seas below,

a heart free from the slavery

of determined shores, of nerves and bones.

I know your every hour, every movement, every scent,

and your shadow, your silence, your breast,

how they tremble and what colors precisely,

and your gait, your melancholy, your eyebrows,

and your blouse, your ring, and moment,

and my patience runs out and I drive my knee against the stone

and I beg you,

give birth to me.

I know everything that is far from you,

who can say what exists that far away,

after noon, after the horizon, beyond the sea . . .

and all beyond all of them,

who can say what something that far off is called.

That's why I bend my knee to meet

the twin knee of stone.

And I beg you,

give birth to me.

I know all you never knew,

the heartbeat past the beat you hear,

the end of the word when you spoke just a syllable,

trees – wooden shadows of your veins,

rivers – shifting shadows of your blood,

and stones, stones – stone shadows

of my knee,

which I bend before you and I beg,

give birth to me. Give birth to me.

The moon is heavy on my face,

my chest, and on my memory,

it will weigh on me like platinum,

until I drop the flag of glory.

Until I bend my knee,

and the tearing makes me scream,

like a narrowing viaduct

that batters trees with stony rain.

Until I lift the heel

I pressed upon your hour,

until it tarnishes, the loneliness

that covers me in silver.

Only my life will truly die for me,

but who knows when.

Only grass knows how earth tastes.

Only my blood truly longs

for my heart, as it moves on.

Tall is air, tall is you,

tall is my sadness.

A time will come when horses die.

A time will come when cars rust.

A time will come when rain is cold

and every woman has your head on

and wears your dresses.

A bird will come, large, white,

and lay the egg of the moon.

I.

I tried to string the light

like Ulysses strung his bow in the stone hall

of the suitors.

I tried to bend the light

like a branch whose only leaf

was the sun.

But the light, in cold vibration, pulled

off my arms,

and sometimes they grew back,

other times, not.

I tried to pull the light down,

to break it over my knee like a sword,

but the edge slipped from my hands,

and cut off my fingers.

Oh, they fell on the ground

rapping

like a wild spring rain, or

rolling like drums that foretell evil.

And I waited,

and sometimes my fingers

grew back,

other times, not.

And I took the light in my arms

like a tree trunk

and begged permission

to bend it,

but it would tilt just enough

to throw my head against the rocks,

my legs kicking toward the stars,

like two Turkish warlords howling

for a helmet knocked across a battlefield.

II.

I tried to bend the light.

I hung on to it with both hands,

and every evening,

I dropped down to the stones, my head sparking

on impact.

The thick, black oil of nighttime dreams

not blood

spurted from my forehead

and spread around me like a pool,

like a lake rising

against a single shore –

the bone of my brow.

Everything moved far from me,

like the heart, before death.

Everything was closer to me

than a retina wounded by light.

I was on the edge of a black lake

with a single shore

(the bone of my brow)

and I could see through it, like

through a magnifying glass.

III.

I looked through the black glass

of nighttime dreams,

deep into the earth,

where the sun falls in flicks,

and lindens over their shadows,

my hands fell beside smooth stones,

half in darkness, half in light.

My eyelids fell battered

by ancient skies never seen before.

(Outside, a gaze broke

and fell, floating alone.)

The light fell in round spaces

unraveled into shakes and waves,

it hit the edges and unheard

blacker and blacker hummed the sound.

IV.

But corpses fill the depths of the earth

and there is no room, no room, no room

for questions.

Like roots, dead skeletons

twist the quick of the earth, and wring

the lava out, until it loses its mind.

Here there is never room, no room, no room,

even time must enter time

like facing mirrors.

Even memories must enter memories,

and my childhood face

has ten eyes squeezed together,

ready to pile all their images together

in a deadly mound.

I was dizzy, I looked into the quick of the earth –

from every age

hung a body

less and less filled out,

less material,

like a worm cut into bait

to hook the years.

Here there is never room, no room, no room.

The black lens of nighttime dreams

will not reveal even one fissure

where I could lay down

and put a question to rest.

The quick of the earth is full

of homes of corpses,

and there is no room, no room, no room,

for questions.

There are ten skulls in a skull.

There are ten shanks in a shank.

There are ten sockets in an eye socket.

Everything ramifies downward,

an uninterrupted root of bone

that wrings out of itself

black death, black lava,

pits and cores, lost time.

V.

I was trying to string the light

when the bow suddenly straightened