apocryphal citation from Euclid
I.
What about the soul and body?
I fall asleep and let my head hang
into the simultaneous world,
removing the weight of my head
from this world
and burdening with its weight
the simultaneous world.
What do you mean, no?!
Why not, why can’t they be
at the same time, the same place
two things?
What about the soul and body?
What about the helf and helvol?
II.
Ah, yes, I live in a space
devoid of generosity.
I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,
a sphere.
If I lived on a square, a cube
there’d be some type of plenty,
but I live on a sphere, a sphere, a sphere,
a sphere.
Everything is based on economy.
Maximum of content,
minimum of form.
Freedom is a form.
Content is our own existence.
Everything is based on economy;
the earth is a sphere,
the moon a sphere,
the sun a sphere,
the stars, sublime, are spheres.
I live on a sphere, a sphere.
The earth has mountains,
the moon rings,
the sun spots,
the stars rays,
but only for this world,
mine,
inside their illusion of freedom.
III.
A tree cannot be a tree.
Vegetable vision would be too free.
I don’t believe I have two hands and feet.
Corporeal vision would be too free.
Everything is based on economy.
In the simultaneous world, my body
is made of my body
and a branch of a branch
and passing time
of the tramboleen of time.
In the supersimultaneous world
my body and my body
make up my body.
Everything in the same place, simultaneously.
Like teeth that bite
a fiber from one lone world
meet the teeth that bite off
a mouthful from another lone world
that illuminates
the tramboleen
in a sphere, a sphere, a sphere.
IV.
Everything is based on economy.
I can’t believe a leaf is just green.
In the simultaneous world it is ahov
and in the other simultaneous world it is sirip
and in the other it is ep
the other it is ip
and in all the others it is as it is
to gather, with all the others in one place,
and give birth to a sphere.
V.
I cross the street.
In the simultaneous world they knock down a wall.
In the simultaneous world, the other one, they just conquered
the tower of Malta,
and in the other, other simultaneous world,
a bomb just exploded.
And in still another world
other than the others,
the ocean
is quiet and windless,
so when I cross the street
and set my foot on things,
in the other simultaneous world,
like Jesus I walk on water.
VI.
I sleep on a bed in an attic,
in the simultaneous world my bed
is half in a wall
half in an engine,
and in the other world, simultaneous, it rains
and mushrooms sprout under my sheet.
In this world there is peace,
in the simultaneous world there is war,
in the other simultaneous world it is spring,
and it is tramboleening
in the other simultaneous world.
VII.
A,
E,
a sound for the mouth made of my mouth
follows.
And then the complement of A
then anti-A
so we can make a sphere, sphere, sphere,
sphere.
VIII.
Ah, body, ah, tree,
ah, grass and green, ah, rabbit,
making us up, gulping us up
wheels with teeth, asymmetrical,
ah, thought.
Only the uneasiness of our gulping,
the upper jaw of tomorrow’s god
and the lower jaw of yesterday’s god
devours the prey of today . . .
IX.
Euclid, you old inhuman,
you believed there was just one world,
based on inhuman postulates,
you fed humanity
the common sense of stars,
believing nothing was like them.
You brought teeth back from the dead,
but not their bite.
With truths of a moment
you tried to tell us: stop
when the nimbus of the simultaneous world
bloomed on our crowns.
Euclid, you madman,
good man, grand good man,
unmeasured, departed,
and shown to no one,
only the rattling of tooth on tooth
and a sound slipping,
from the son-sphere and the parent
left outside speech.
Left outside freedom,
unsaved,
horrid.
X.
I am arguing with you, Euclid, old man,
the way Job argued with God
when He covered him with sores and boils
just for a bet with the devil,
with whom He makes a sphere.
I am arguing with you, idiotic old man,
with no purpose in life,
freedom and time, hermit,
heavenly among the heavens.
And I cry on your mountainous hand
with long tears like hunting dogs
and I say to you: spheres are not beautiful!
But tell me the truth, do spheres exist?
UNWORDS
(Necuvintele, 1969)
Paean
What are you, A?
you, most human and
absurd letter,
O, you, glorious sound!
With you I struggle,
into you I launch my being
as once the Achaeans did their horse
into Troy.
I will bed you
and want only you,
you slutty enchanter
desperate goddess!
You dance in my mouth
when I die and become like
a soldier pushed up from the back
by grass growing toward the sky;
and I want you to not exist
so I can be free of speech;
imaginary vagina, A, the letter
belly-heavy with all others.
Not to run, but float
to pass through rivers like sun rays
without matter,
banked by deaf ears.
You, taloned music
dragging my body over
words
like a grazing lamb
snatched up by an eagle.
A, you angry ghost,
who are you
and what do you want?
Loss of an Eye
I used to tap my fingernail until
no nail was left,
and my finger until
it wore away.
But a blind man came
to me and said:
– Brother, leave your nail alone,
what if there’s an eye
on the tip,
do you want to pop it?
But still, but still
this door between you and me,
someone has to knock it down.
Jacob Battles the Angel; Or, On the Idea of “You”
I.
That which is furthest from me,
being closer to me,
is named “you.”
See how I came to wrestle with myself.
In me wrestled “you,”
“you,” eyelid, you wrestled,
you, hand,
you, leg, you wrestled
and though I was lying down, I ran
around and around my name.
Only to myself can I not say “you.”
Everything else, including my soul,
is “you.”
You, O soul.
II.
– You laughed.
I denied it and said:
– No, I didn’t.
For I was afraid.
But he said, Yes, you did.
And truly, the name,
leaning
like my body was
his oaken cane,
hurled itself against him,
the one without a name,
the one nothing but body,
against “you,”
the body of all names,
against “you,”
the father of all names.
But he
when the dawn poured forth
stopped thinking of me.
He forgot.
III.
– Change your name, he said.
I responded: I am my name.
– Change your name, he said.
I responded:
– You want me to be someone else,
you want me to be no more,
you want me to die
and be no more.
How can I change my name?
IV.
He said:
– You were born on my lap.
I have known you since you were born.
Do not fear death,
remember how you were
before you were born.
For that is what you will be after you die.
Change your name.
V.
– You cried.
I denied it and said:
– No, I didn’t.
For I was afraid.
But he said, Yes, you did,
and stopped thinking of me.
He forgot.
VI.
I am only my name.
The rest is “you,” I told him.
He didn’t hear me, for his
mind was elsewhere.
Why else would he have said:
You wrestled the word itself
and won!
Was he the word itself?
Is name word?
. . . He who is only “you,”
you and you and you and you,
who surrounds my name?
The Battle Against Five Antiterrestrial Elements
I.
The general came to me and said:
– You are the only one left who can do anything;
it’s all up to you, whether we
will stay like this, or not.
. . . Soldiers were
all along the roads. And
a great, quiet rabble.
Not one was at ease.
Not one was at attention or ready
for attack, yet.
II.
What should I do? How? When? Where?
He pushed me slowly, between my shoulder blades,
into the field outside,
beside a withered maple sapling.
Here it was quiet,
and over the freshly ploughed terrain
suddenly,
from under the wide clouds at the other end,
came hurled at me
an apple.
III.
I wanted to dive and catch the apple
like a ball.
It would have been a mistake, –
they told me afterwards, the angels,
it would have been a mistake,
they told me afterwards
friends, family, military officers.
IV.
I ran to the apple,
and peeled its ring
like it was Saturn,
I ran to the apple
and peeled its
red band like it was
an old packet of good quality cigarettes.
V.
The apple broke in two, the worm
ran through my fingers into the earth;
it left by way of those furrows,
and beside the withered maple at my end
I grinned
like a drunk at the door of a bowling alley.
VI.
The general took me to the middle of the
restless soldiers,
along those narrow streets where they
were neither at attention nor at ease.
He took me there to be seen, he took me there
to calm them,
under dark clouds hanging
over the city with narrow streets and soldiers,
those strange soldiers, clean,
smelling of lavender,
neither quiet nor
unquiet,
with wide, glistening eyes,
resting their hands on their weapons;
at whom, they did not know
or in which direction
to open – fire.
VII.
I have only one more element
for you to defeat, the last one,
then we can escape and be, –
another way, we will be – but in another way . . .
said the general to me.
VIII.
Two, three, and four.
The second, third, and fourth battle
I cannot remember any more.
The general assured me that they
had nothing to do, at all, with words,
and thus nothing to do with either things
or our civilization.
The general assured me
that I had won the two,
three, four,
the second, third, fourth battle,
but as winner I had lost the right
to learn anything about the victims
or the battleground,
by rote or by heart,
The general gave as proof the fact that I am,
that he is,
that we are,
that they are,
that the city still existed, as we knew it.
The general told me that we
cannot praise ourselves with victory
of the second,
third, fourth,
because they have nothing to do with the domain
of communication,
the domain of comprehension,
OMPREHENSION . . .
MPREHENSION . . .
PREHENSION . . .
REHENSION . . .
EHENSION . . .
IX.
I understood that the battle
against the fifth element,
the definitive battle, would take place
on a street.
At that moment, the battle began.
– Move the walls, I said.
– Move the walls, I shouted,
and I moved all the walls from behind.
(The general held my shoulder
to keep me from having a wall at my back
so I was victorious.)
The general clapped my left shoulder
and I had no wall at my back,
just the general.
It, the one in front of me, it
ended up with no wall in back.
It, from the fifth antiterrestrial element,
having walls behind it,
ended up wit
h no walls in back.
Because of the general and me,
it ended up with no walls in back.
All the houses on the street
I moved with a brusque gesture,
and it,
the fifth antiterrestrial element,
would have liked to move the other part
of the walls
of the street,
and it, the fifth,
would have liked to move the other part
of the street . . .
but the general clapped
my left shoulder
so I had no more walls in back of me;
it, the fifth,
could not imagine I was not in front of it,
but I simply walked the street
with the general in back of me.
That’s how I could move all its walls from behind,
moving a Wall means
the death of the fifth element.
It fell, emaciated,
nothing in back of him,
noiseless
and orange.
It fell as though it had not been.
I moved its walls.
I moved its Wall.
X.
Tired, mired, perspired,
we walked with the general
through the soldiers.
They looked at us
and could not believe we had won.
They looked at us, the general
and me,
ready to fight.
They could not imagine our victory.
They could not believe
there was nothing left to fight for.
Their disbelief
wore on the general.
But the general, for some time,
like a wing of cinders hung
delicate,
from my spine.
XI.
Above me there was a voice:
– Beloved child,
you have square hands,
unstained by blood!
The Heart’s Battle Against Blood
I.
I have no sky. What is far from me
am I, black, interior.
My sky is made of black flesh.
Buried sky.
I have no field. Its edges are burned.
It rises up like a palm
that claws its fingers together, into a fist.
I have only enough space for space to go numb
around me.
I inflate and deflate.
I inflate with foreignness
and deflate from loneliness.
I cannot advance.
The distance from me to me
is covered with death.
It abates,
the sensation of leaving yourself.
I am the one who guards the door
in case I try to run away.
II.
Blood comes in the dark
bearing illogical news, – cry
for it, O eye rolled back,
O ice, tip of the stalagmite.
So I suffocate in nuances –
angels, run unraveled over waters,
Byzantium, your wood is broken, brothers
on the mother’s side, foreign on the father’s.
When wood comes to power,