we kissed with our throats cut.
My words and yours
stuck together, because
the place where they were born
was one and the same for both of us.
Like a god with two bodies and no head,
we trotted along
on four feet,
with four hands patting the walls.
The river flowed by quickly, even though
it existed alone.
Existing, it carried existence and all else.
Thus frozen and alone, we persisted
sleeping in the same knee joint,
in the center without color,
at the edge without noise.
Where They Go
Feelings go, oh,
in the ear
Feelings go, oh,
in the eye,
nostril, tongue.
Oh my, feelings go
in the ear.
They sleep like
an earring hangs,
they trip along the thin cartilage,
they bed on the drum of the tympanum . . .
. . . feelings go, oh,
in the ear.
Only the soul goes
nowhere.
The soul has nowhere to go.
The soul goes nowhere.
Its ear is
no one’s ear.
Scent on a High Hill
As though it rained, long ago, the black earth,
slippery, bugs
with wet legs press their bodies
against black branches
or windows, or door frames, Lord,
oh,
and musty air on boxes
flecked with green.
God has left then, ah, he’s left,
and there’s no reason I can smell, no reason.
High hill, valley, high hill,
loam, black grass . . .
The Sacrifice and Burning of Everything
I break a lamb along its spine,
my thumb pops out its eye,
I snap a hoof off, then the nostrils,
the liver, the unguent kidney,
I hold the brain jelly in my palm
careful to not let it drip
its lamby vision, much too calm,
and stain my demiurgic tunic.
Lord, I burn them that the smell be sweet,
I will burn everything, for the sake of sin,
I will smite a bull between its horns
and cut the goat’s jugular, to be forgiven,
I will tear apart any animal I meet.
To please you will I scorch
their pieces, and all of this to signify
that you and I resemble them. The torch
will burn whatever you want, the thigh
on the bone, the lung I pull into the light.
For you, O Lord, are the greatest sense of smell,
the nostril of time, the epochal nostril.
But I will never pluck a flower,
never crush a splendorous carnation,
nor will I ever have to pull the sex
from a sublime body of verdation.
We who have animal bodies
lacking roots, we move.
We, beside the flower’s soft splendor,
sit eating one another.
So we may be a tasty feed
for worlds stuck in the earth,
the taxes trees and grass
will pay, simply to be.
We have only soles, but they
have roots in myth. Our sky
has stars alone, just stars,
while they are deep with halted time.
What Is Life? When Does It Start, and Where Is It Going?
Toward all parts at once, said
the one without parts.
Toward one part alone, said
The Part.
What is it?
What what is it?
It is, pure and simple.
I mean I, I mean T, I mean I, I mean S.
The first I is older than the second I.
That’s all.
Noose
Along the stone’s grey-white edge
young people file by,
thin, like an evil chalk mark
on the idolatrous slate of the night.
O equations, to the power of two,
gentle trigonometry
of the only one who exists
in us, the divine “to be.”
They pass and bells ring,
they pass and cannons ring,
they pass and clocks ring,
ever faster, ever more disturbing.
Long and holy line, I would hang myself
from you alone, as if from a tree,
and let myself be rocked and rung
by a secular, cold breeze.
What Is the Supreme Power That Drives the Universe and Creates Life?
The power to be, but especially the power
to have been – being.
The power to not be
but especially the power
to have not been – being.
The power, ah, the power
to have not had power,
a-e-i-o-u, e-i-a-u-o,
u-a-i-e-o.
Sound with smell,
continuity without time,
migratory heart
exchanging bodies.
If you are no more, it is like
you have not been.
To be is like
you have not been,
a-e-i-o-u, u-o-i-e-a,
A and E
and I and O
and U . . .
What Is a Human? What Are His Origins? What Fate Awaits Him?
A human is a leaf a human sees.
A human is a flower a human smells.
A human is a horse a human rides.
A human is a peach a human tastes.
A human is a sea a human touches.
A human is a wheel.
A human is milk a human drinks.
A human is the dawn over a human.
A human is a dream at night.
A human is the pleasure of a blue sky a human sees.
A human is a bird’s flight a human flies.
A human is a word a human speaks.
A human is a word understood.
A human is a word a human reads.
A human is a word un-understood.
Human is a word asleep in human stone.
Human is a word at rest in stars
above the human.
Human is the unword of human.
Human is a dying human tended by a human.
Human takes a deposition
about the human, before a human.
A human was not born so will not die.
He is eternal and forever
because he takes all depositions
about that which exists.
A human has never existed and will never exist
because nonexistence is its own witness.
And still, a human, human, human
is one who does not believe
who did not believe
who we did not believe
would ever learn to die.
The One Who Eats Dragonflies
I eat dragonflies because they’re green
with black eyes,
because they have two sets of wings,
transparent wings,
because they fly without making noise,
because I don’t know who made them
or why,
because they are beautiful and gentle,
because I don’t know why they’re beautiful and gentle,
because they don’t talk and because
I’m not completely sure that’s true.
I eat dragonflies because I don’t like
the taste,
because they are noxious and
don’t sit well.
I eat dragonflies because I don’t understand them,
I eat them because I live at the same time they do,
I eat them because once I tried to eat myself,
my hands first,
and they were infinitely more disgusting,
I eat them because I tried
to eat my tongue,
my own fleshy tongue,
and I was terrified when I saw
it spit out words.
They were green with black eyes,
and far from me, and hungry.
Who Am I? What Is My Place in the Cosmos?
Without me, it is impossible – proof that I am.
Without me, it was impossible;
proof: I pulled myself out of myself,
that is, from that me that was.
I am he without whom it is impossible.
I am he without whom it was impossible.
I am he who gave a deposition
on God’s existence.
I am he who gave a deposition
on God’s nonexistence, because
I made God visible.
I am made by God, because
I made God.
I am neither good nor bad,
I just am.
I am the word “am.”
I am the ear that hears “am.”
I am the spirit that understands “am.”
I am the absurd body of “am”
I am the place where “am” exists
and the bed where it sleeps.
Atavistic Melancholy
Many of them, for various reasons
all living together below the floor,
mixed together, becoming enemies
of death,
some dying of old age
or simply
killing themselves.
From time to time, someone
rents a reason.
I myself lived inside a reason
of this kind, but after a while
I wandered off.
There were so many. From time to time,
in the common grave where they died
they left bones behind, much more beautiful
than I could have imagined.
Now I have climbed up. Sometimes I am
able to think even at the level of the moon.
And still I long, like I can’t take any more,
to throw myself into the chimney, come out through the fireplace,
and lie spread over the floor for hours on end
with my ear pressed to the joists.
Idols of the Grass
Occasionally, instead of grassblades
there are idols, green and thin.
Horses circumambulate in wonder
and swarms of ants . . .
They glisten at night like blades
threatening the stars and moon.
The horses run on gravel to the river.
No more ants are seen, not one.
Grassblades for an unborn horse
Only in the future will it eat them.
I have seen them, yes, I have,
but I surrendered before them.
Fruits Before Being Eaten
I prepare for a great tree,
the one that is nothing but a smell,
I turn the nostrils of dusky
fruits toward the hunted vegetable.
I strip off my bark and rings
down to my rising osmotic sap.
Monday is an apple, Tuesday a pear, and Wednesday
a bitter grape.
Autumn falls. A kind of yellow
arrives, and rust. The tree
drops its hours. Seconds faint
within clusters of grapes.
Let’s have a drink, not wine, but a sour,
early fermentation, let’s bind the mouths
of hunting dogs with raffia, so they
will take the zenith in their snouts.
One nostril stuck beside the next
wedded like the tubes of a pan-flute
and you play what runs through them –
the smell of fruit.
Air Currents
Air currents, running unseen
through the unseen,
the pressure of emptiness on emptiness.
The awkwardness of birds forced
to move their nerves wrapped
in feathers.
Tall animals, sleeping
on tenuous air.
They poke their beaks out
of the atmosphere, in waves.
Here are spheres, but very
far apart.
They want to leap up
but cannot
that belowness –
up above, unexisting,
Quiet. We prepare for something else.
Tragedies in Peacetime
I was enclosed in my own capsule.
My heart worked well, and
I would have slept behind it,
accustomed as I was to the irregular thumps
of interior time.
But my every second was measured out
and I had no patience left,
not even
enough to write one letter down.
If I had died, I would have been good dead,
a hero, even.
Everything I had done rocked to and fro
in the quiet battle of the stars.
I hung from a hook of fate.
Red holidays ran from my throat . . .
But look, they came
and took me from the capsule.
They invited my soul to exist
anywhere I liked, except my body.
And the liberated soul suddenly
had time,
it brought the bird-loud tree to light,
it was blanched by the moon.
It would have liked to become a sphere,
but it found its own body as disgusting
as Noah’s putrid ark.
It got lazy, took on angels,
doubted the reality of fate.
O unhappy character!
You should have stayed in myth
and kept yourself for yourself, just enough
to sleep and dream
the unclear light of your birth.
Ars Poetica
for Lucian Raicu
O music, you vibration
most rare
because we will never
leap over our ears.
O smells, you wonders
because my heart may travel
toward childhood
through your tunnel.
O colors, you deceit
of light.
O words, you words,
I stretch out behind you
constantly, a locomotive’s
black soul . . .
Any peak can pierce you
words, you words,
and any peak’s desire,
words, you unwords . . .
Song
God forgot me, in my thoughts
until my thought
became my body.
Leaves forgot me
shading over me
until the unseen
became my seen.
I wait as though someone
will remember me,
and meanwhile, worn by air, worn by snow
I snuff my light in anyone.
Self-Portrait in an Autumn Leaf
The unwhole is meant to dominate me,
god without thighs, goddess without arms.
Trees without trunks, grass without green,
a slalom of white through vertical dark.
Spiders cling to the winding silence
and behind their muffled fluttering,
their hearts drag themselves into an older body,
more solitary, edges crumpled, time sputtering.
The unwhole is meant to dominate me,
a single-faced medallion,
d
ays that begin after noon and end after noon,
without continuation.
Time
It can pop like a lightbulb,
this second, so familiar.
It can lie on top of us
and we drown under stale water.
Darting shadows flee at dusk
below the moon, like under a round
shelter thrown off at random
by all eyes opening – at once.
Inverted chimney, its smoke in the ravine,
the sky pulled into the gape.
Maybe that’s why it shows, magnified
like under a glass, what for us remains.
Look: it resembles no word.
It cannot be said or seen.
It lies between the sky and earth
without an end, without beginning.
Passage . . .
I fled by jumping on tip-toe
from body to body, like an arcade
lain over the dying row
of columns in a cold Hellas.
Dirty in spots, I flew
with open arms, forehead out,
eyebrows in the future,
while my thigh turned snow-white
between the jaws of a gnawing sky.
O, mouths give birth to great syllables
when they close in the abyss . . .
But I flew through a god’s clenched teeth,
between Scylla and Charybdis.
Mirage
In front of me, the galleries of air
with rats gnawing,
wings of angels asleep
with their sternums stuck in the earth.
Mirage of abundance, of rest,
of sleep against the milky
titty of the mother
who bore the divine
Jesus. Fa-la-la.
It rains and there is trash, fa-la-la,
it rains inside, in the breath,
fa-la-la, in fingers, fa-la-la,
in kneecaps, fa-la-la, the brow,
fa-la-la, in teeth,
fa-la-la, in bodies unborn
and fa-la-la, in bodies great.
So I’ll Stay
So I’ll stay, with my snout and pout yanked out
of the infected air, all of me
snagged on a hook by the roof of my mouth,
the pilot of the void and beings.
My, my, I’ll end up in a cauldron
spiced with peppery meteorites,
food for another, higher being when
the starved with my starvation unites.