11.
Then Tamerlane’s wife
kissed the architect on the mouth
and painted a black stripe laterally across
her forehead
like other Uzbek women.
12.
No one knows a mirror.
Representation
I have no conscience because I
always chew my pencil. Can we say
white paper
with black lines on it
is like a human body? This question
not to be decided by pointing
at a tree nor yet by a description
of simple pleasures.
Smell of retrieval. Led to expect the wrong
answer. An arsenal without purpose
but why yes please.
There is no touching the black box.
The tree not pointed at lives
in your bringing up the subject
and leaves space for need, falling.
The white ground. The waning heat.
I’d like
to say the history of the world. Or that grammar
milks essence into propositions
of human kindness.
The difficulty here’s not true or false
but that the picture’s in the foreground
and its sense back where the gestures link
so closely to the bone
the words
give notice.
The application is not easy.
a form/of taking/it all
from Unpredicted Particles,
or Columbus toward the New World
laid down the equations
and expected obedience
or felt gradual
but all the same expected
At the wharf. The gulls were crying. And the sun going down behind the masts. Then the gulls stopped crying. It was evening, and she wore red stockings. Such little things.
“the grammar of the word ‘knows’
is closely related to that of
‘mastery’”
the difference
in a window
in Genoa
the window
holds my breath
the window
the breath of possibility
there where October
once we let go
of the frame
the images wave after wave
The assumptions about space and time in Maxwell’s theory could not be traced back to the Newtonian laws. It seemed to follow that either Newtonian mechanics or Maxwell’s theory must be false.
for all he knew in Genoa
unsteady atoms
with fissures toward
the ocean might end
and fall
imagined an encounter
that couldn’t be imagined
We must distinguish at least three axes in our relation to the other. There is, first of all, a value judgment: the other is good or bad, my equal or inferior.
reading Marco Polo
Columbus’ body started toward October
water
poured into the gap
the push out of the frame
out the window
who are you now we’re all at sea it’s
fine
particles of
traffic of past and
incommunicable
speed swung out from the bowsprit
distance contracting
in the curve of
a look
blue pulse of sleep lapped into
the word water
the globe
wasn’t it more like
water leaping
a quantum nipple toward the sky
a breast
an early world
in october there began
the breakdown of structures
where the word for prophecy
means also law
time becomes tangible as trouble
“they waved their lives goodbye
as the facts washed on shore”
Secondly, there is a movement toward or away from the other: I embrace the other’s values or I impose my own culture on him (assimilation). It is also possible to remain indifferent.
three easy toward undressing
to see
the past
lost as new parts of speech
question
your whole
different
body
How silent she was. She would neither talk nor weep. What was he to make of such a being that leaves no more trace than a snowflake in the middle of summer?
the high speed of
smashed to probability
in love and how raw
taking captives
or naked surrender
putting on his boots he had expected
to walk into the mirror
one of the and oldest
The window was part of it too, the window where he first saw her. But had it been at the window? Or was this just the way he remembered it later?
constant of desire
and distances that don’t contract to
energy
mass
religion gold or Spanish
there where he spun his coin
so fast it left behind
the resonance
of transfer
In quantum theory the formal mathematical apparatus cannot be directly patterned on an objective occurrence in space and time. What we establish mathematically is only to a small extent an “objective fact,” and largely a survey of possibilities.
transparency of glass and eyes
deceptive
but kin to water
and that I can’t conceive of
outside my images
such very small
such very different
his heart lightly
a relation described
by the word “between”
tomorrow closed over
repetition
of water
in october
put his foot
on a flaw in geometry
nakedness
another opaque
The limits of this field can never be exactly known. Only the discovery that certain phenomena can no longer be ordered by means of the old concepts tells us that we have reached the limit.
the spies drew a precise map
of the binary mutations
between memory
but the king remained mute
the information too steep too
like you
at the window
not moving or
moving only as required
between encounter and
transparency
exacerbates
the gap
in the breakdown the right-hand spiral
whereas October came straight
at the foremast
their name means “they who explain
themselves clearly”
a nakedness
we changed to
centuries of nostalgia
These were all very slight experiences, of course, but they happened over and over again. And later they meant the opposite of what they had meant in the beginning.
the window as a boundary
the window onto
no more
than swerves
remote
where are you now
curved out of the still air
yesterday
curved out of the usable air
and has no parallel where we’ve heaved it
the window
no more image
a key into the language
of america
Chapter I: Salutations
Are of two sorts and come immediately before the body. The pronunciation varies according to the point where the tongue makes contact with pumice found in great quantity. This lends credence, but no hand. Not so entirely Narragansett, the roof of the mouth. Position of hand or weapon conventional or volcanic formation.
Asco wequassunnúmmis. Good Morrow.
sing
salubrious
imitation
intimate
I was born in a town on the other side which didn’t want me in so many. All streets were long and led. In the center, a single person had no house or friends to allay excessive sorrowe. I, like other girls, forgot my name in the noise of traffic, opening my arms more to measure their extension than to offer embrace.
the Courteous Pagan
barefoot and yes
his name laid down
as dead
one openness
one woman door
so slow in otherwise
so close
Chapter II: Of Eating and Entertainment
Indian corne, oiled with free will and predestination is a dish exceeding wholesome if taken through the mouth. Their words, too, fit to eat. And crow. A mark of “cadency.” Similarly, an eye devouring its native region must devote special attention to its dialect. Where they have themselves and their wives risen to prepare. Against initiative of elements, against white bodies, against coining of new words: Tobacco. Unsuccessful.
Mi’shquockuk.
Red Copper Kettle.
cycle
chain
for thought
I began my education by walking along the road in search of the heroic. I did not think to ask the way to the next well. Wilderness like fear a form of drunkenness or acting like a boy. The ground begins to slip. Rhythm of swallows seen from below. It is a strange truth that remains of contentment are yet another obstacle.
the spelling in my mother’s recipes
explains
why she gave birth to me
and in the greatest heat
should feed
on me
all flesh considered
as a value
Chapter IV: Of Their Numbers
Without the help of Wall Street, how quick they are in casting up inalienable numbers. We do not have them. With help of hybrid corn instead of Europe’s pens or poisons. Edge of ingenuity, between numb and nimble, forest or frigid wave before it crashes. Let it be considered whether a split providence or separate encystments in their own minds have taught them. Or concentration, its circular surface. What’s called arithmaticke. A riddle on which matter rests.
Pawsuck. Of the Masculine Gender.
Pâwsuck. One of the Feminine Gender.
Pâwsuck with time to dawdle, to cultivate lucidity and metric structure. Yet did not play by numbers. Too many messengers that do not speak. A bowel movement every day and one war every generation. I feared becoming an object too boring for my bones to hold up, however clumsily.
nostalgia figured
in bruised shins
and loss
loss of eternity
in triplicate
such that my knees
could come apart
and tell
their seeds
Chapter VII: Of Their Persons and Parts of Body
Great bunch of hayre raked from darkness, yet as organized a physical substance as sober English. And can be photographed. In the brain, the proportion of quick apprehension to arable not less deep a structure than distinguished from limbs and labor or the central part of a document distinguished from title, nave, garment, soundbox or viscosity. Though childbirth will force christianity down the ladder into fighting units: women never forgive unparted flesh.
busy
guard
snatcher
snatcher
I was shorn of illusion and impulse, though with a sorry knife, before touching amorous form. Where were my eyes? My heart was good and went to meet that difficult unfolding. Nudity in danger. All manner of man and of what bigness chased me to the bottom of my ignorance, desolately sublimating the fewness of wishes. Inexact report.
My long blue birth
snatched
from what sense of deed
what horizontal sleep
whereas
a virgin marriageable
can slip
like fog in anywhere
Chapter VIII: Of Discourse and Newes
Tidings on condition, a corresponding sign to sound which our geologists have discolored toward the vanishing point. Echo off yore, their preoccupation: if white men speake true or only to disturb the air. Even living in translation they deliver themselves at arm’s length with emphatic purpose according to stress and position and sometimes alongside it. The message, slowed down by change of climate, becomes obsolete. And understand not that a tongue must keep in consonant motion to cover up its fork.
print
worthy
Pannóuwa awàun, awaun keesitteóuwin.
Some Body Hath Made This Lie.
Too long I took clockwork as a model instead of following the angle my inclinations make with the ground. Why speake I not, I should have asked, counting on articulation of sound forms in waiting. The restless oscillations stripped me of more mythic aspirations and left my muscles mendicant, destiny manifest, skeleton without closet. When it is here, when it is come, alone or in a crowd, the moment always a matrix of terrible and stupid. My tongue so tied. To mother. Never as clear as when straight impulse bends back into curve.
comes as
bait
where speaking
is still possible
the messenger
runs swiftly till
no
matter how
he can’t forget
Chapter X: Of the Season of the Yeere
They have thirteen moneths and are content to settle for that many. The courage to grow organs in reply to want, the way a giraffe stretches her neck to mounting advantage. If seasons can force the day around the sun there is no end to threshold or shedding skin. The chief difficulty with nature’s outline yields hand-held exposures such as Tashecautúmmo. How Many Years Since fatal expression, since semantics, since influence.
able
ing
Made to sleep on the balcony, I tried to lord it over the kids still playing on the sidewalk. My space eked out by height, with family prejudice to back me up. With acute daring I dropped a tin box the way you drop a plumbline down into sleep causing rings to widen out until a boy stuck his finger into the gob of spittle I had carefully placed inside. The shore fell into ruins.
machinery in place behind
hurt sharp
enough to trace
into the wiring of psychology
a risk of
membranes
undercuts the alibi
Chapter XII: Concerning the Heavens and Heavenly Lights
Which they adore, above acknowledging
colonization. The stellar pallor attending powers shot madly from their spheres, the sky all over the earth, heaving its divine dimensions. If quickened circulation acts upon our thoughts, the moon so old it sets in full proportion. A light that does not slap you in the face, but raises nouns like navigation and transcendence. Nothing strange in pigment (black) that does not feed on side stars obtained by imperfect combustion. Rocks. Meteorites. Great Western Railway.
opalescent
celestial
celibacy
An inner heat, an inflammation, predicting intimacies to hurt your eyes. Expanse of bodies, heavenly, observed on lying in the fields. Frequent occasion. And measured by their angle much observed in motion, like the tin box tossed, sure curve belonging only to itself. Parabolas of the inanimate, these very children will throw stones.
toward sunset
the uninvited guests
have guns
and written off
red skin
they (mis)
take territory
for imperative
the uninvited guests
Chapter XIII: Of the Weather
It may bee wondred why, New England being 12° neerer to the Sun, reality is yet in doubt. Some parts of winter act as lens owing to long reach as the Nor West wind comes under varying conditions and over loads of snow. If, when thin, the air unites the tribal factions, and a long vowel, more cold than overcast, runnes about starke naked, a climatic change occurs. American enough is all they know of atoms. Atmosphere windward like sexual feeling and as unpredictable, thick and vapory.
beaten
bound
cock
eye
under
My spittle overflowed literal expectations and was caught in flagrant light. Giggles sapped my resolve to leave home for unwobbling hyperbole. Inner darkness. Euphoric entropy. In a mixture of panic and mistaken gender I went West, intending the milky way. Common error.