which hit, or did not hit, the only target. As he stood
at a bridge one time, ancestor-like, master yet dumb-
struck, aghast at her disclosure to the light of day, the
lovelorn brightness escaping from her aura while lines
began to form—longer and longer ran toward a book,
with a collapse of stars to ground as yet another night
rose (yes, again) to sky. As a result of that: now, do not
write, do not communicate: there’s no one here to hold
your voice, your hand as if they mattered—host gone
toward another place, his guests unwelcome, sight broken
down, day never now to shine again, nor even stars dead
high up there, nor any light whatever. You: silence now.
Trobardao Leu, & Clus & Ric
ix. the longing & desire for justice condign to the end: a preseason sale
I thought of the limitless vastness of the universe;
I wept for the long affliction of man’s life.
Those that had gone before I should never see
And those yet to come I should never know of.
—Chu Ci (Songs of the South), circa 300 BC, tr. by David Hawkes
Dear Reader:
Before I can return your greeting, or
pronounce farewell, I wish to offer you
the unique privilege of a preseason sale.
In order for you to participate,
I shall require the following information:
1) your name 2) your d.o.b. 3) your age 4) all your i.ds.
4) your user names 5) your codes 6) your passwords
7) your driving license 8) your employer 9) your street
address 10) your billing address 11) your shipping address
12) your Medicare number 13) your secondary insurance
number 14) All your tertiaries 15) your SSN 16) your
gender 17) your marital status 18) the number of your
children 19) all the above on spouse & infants as per 1-10
20) your c.i.a., your m.i.six, or k.g.b. i.d.s 21) your tempe-
rature 22) your blood pressure 23) Number of your pater-
nal granny’s teeth 24) Number of your maternal granny’s
teeth 25) Length of your penis if a male (in 16ths of an inch
por favor) or length of your vagina if a female (in 16ths
of an inch por favor) 26) your anal circumference
(in 16ths of an inch por favor) 27) your race or ethnic affi-
liation 28) your faith or lack of it 29) your education (gra-
duate only) 30) your ism if any 31) the date of your last prize,
and/or: award, review, encomium, bribe, or quid pro quo and/
or: all copulations for service rendered.
The above in triplicate or more if it please you.
In addition: 32) your best guess as to the date of
the achievement of universal lunacy 33) your best guess as to
the date of lattermost extinction 34) your best guess
as to the date of Exitus Generis Humani 35) your best guess
as to the devoration of this planet by the sun.
This survey is for the purpose of ensuring
that you receive all your benefits
and in no way is it designed to enrich us.
Your answers may be recorded
for technical or educational purposes and may be
hand delivered, e-mailed, texted, phoned, faxed, snail-mailed,
couriered or dumped (if not sent by passenger pigeon) to the
following address: “Asylum for the Hardly Rich & Minimally
Happy,” Alt/Neue Mejiko, 87500.
Leave space for the development of future questions.
Do not forget to sign your bio-signature.
Please enjoy the last of this conversation
and have nice days.
x. die unendlichen
i)
Where there is Mood. The sinkhole drops to pit of
the abyss which translates into Hades. The mood—
whatever can be said of it—begins to lighten. No
thing’s as terrible as the true nightmare. The darkness
turns to shades of gray, life casts off the impossible:
not more, no never more than practice of the possible.
But a mind stumbles from one state to another. When
deep image is of a hanging bridge high over cliffs,
a neck caught in a noose high over cliffs. Though this
would sever vows and promises. How is it possible
this thing survival? No recognition on our part. Each
day warrants another day, the elevator takes mood up
and takes mood down while the desire to live and the
desire to die fail in reconciliation. Broken over abyss.
Pit deep. Friend said “It comes to all: do not invoke it.”
(When arguing it would be best to leave, to disappear,
to fail to live the full of days allotted.) The heart no
longer anchored anywhere. Mind fails to recognize
its denizens, those that would once have manifested
lust to bones and sinews. A hesitation on a brink might
The prophets fail to see or apprehend their prophecy.
The sense that, day by day, one thought fails to con-
nect with all the other thoughts that do belong to it. Is
losing it. It mind you: it is losing it. It can no longer
apprehend the edge of things, tell edge from middle,
or from the break at which an edge desists. Fi-nal, End.
ii)
How terrible: the
count of people who do not exist. Who cannot prove
in any sense of mood to be alive. Yet are undead. And
what is then primarily their essence above all is to be
silent. That’s so—they’re silent. As the dying world
crumbles around them. Oh but their silence is excee-
ding loud! You hear no other noises as long as you’re
on Earth. It breaks you down into the smallest shards.
Mood in its harshness fails to encompass you—as if
you could receive it even so! But, here and there, a
voice—not that loud kind of theirs, but like a deer’s
entombed within a forest, a deer astonishingly rare:
no hunter’s ever even seen it. Correction to the norm.
Faith is but a marinade known to the multitude as “Faith.”
Religion’s but belief in, oh, “Belief.” The replication of
synanthropic species. You might, then almost say, on
target to extinction. Mood closes into theme and lasts.
iii)
Water. Flood cataracts inward, dictating all before it.
In poisoned oceans, whales at polluted krill: danger
of feasting. Now ice. Shatters to Thule’s coruscations.
Bears drowning in white jackets without a necktie on.
Air. Pollution radiates around the globe. Birds choke
and children wretch in multi-million nests and cribs.
Earth. Mud slithers down hillsides over the indigent
from Aberfan to China. Fire. Forests never recorded
collapse on megaplans of future dwellings. National
borders swell in value as politicians swap their wealths.
Imperials buy patrimony in exotic lands to feed their
own home populations—exotics drown in famines.
Water flowing both ways blocked, suddenly arrested,
dam-circumscribed, shored up in altitudes. Down-
river others crave the water needed for their crops. It
is unending. Interminable. Insufferable. It continues.
like these, fires like these, earthquakes like these. Let
migrants steal the ground under their feet, whole peo-
ples running from disaster to disaster. Vast populations
perish; millions of surplus newborns perish. Call on
the great crusades. Any crusades to catapult foul war.
Should humankind be on its way to the crimson planet:
even the giant Mars can be invoked among more recent
gods. The water wars—air, fire, all population wars:
let these erupt and flourish. Earth: open up your guts so
that whole armies sink in you yearning for mother love.
Let earth depopulate to space as remnants feed on roots.
And you? “I shall not willingly destroy this life, but if.
But if the final, ultimate, desires at me I’ll not refuse.”
Would you believe this as a hopeful cry to the awakened?
Copyright © 2017 by Nathaniel Tarn
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Thanks to the editors of the following magazines and anthologies in which some of these poems first appeared: Contemporary Poetry: Nature and Myth (Corbel Stone Press, 2017), Fact-Simile, Hambone, Jacket, Lute & Drum, New American Literature, Poetry Salzburg, Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil: Dispatches Editions, 2017), Seedings (Duration Press), Stonecutter, TriQuarterly, and Zen Monster.
Thanks also to Christopher Benson at The Fisher Press in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for first publishing “Il Piccolo Paradiso” in an edition of twenty copies with his photographs in 2015.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1381) in 2017
Design by Eileen Baumgartner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tarn, Nathaniel, author.
Title: Gondwana & other poems / Nathaniel Tarn.
Description: New York, NY : New Directions Publishing, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017009769 | ISBN 9780811225021 (alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3570.A635 A6 2017 | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009769
eISBN: 9780811225038
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