Map (9 page)

too close for him to dream of me.

I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head—

it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins.

A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,

waiting to be counted.

 

 

“
What time is it?
” “Oh yes, I'm so happy;

all I need is a little bell round my neck

to jingle over you while you're asleep.”

“Didn't you hear the storm? The north wind shook

the walls; the tower gate, like a lion's maw,

yawned on its creaking hinges.”
“How could you

forget? I had on that plain gray dress

that fastens on the shoulder.”
“At that moment,

myriad explosions shook the sky.”
“How could I

come in? You weren't alone, after all.”
“I glimpsed

colors older than sight itself.”
“Too bad

you can't promise me.”
“You're right, it must have been

a dream.”
“Why all these lies; why do you call me

by her name; do you still love her?”
“Of course,

I want you to stay with me.”
“I can't

complain. I should have guessed myself.”

“Do you still think about him?”
“But I'm not crying.”

“That's all there is?”
“No one but you.”

“At least you're honest.”
“Don't worry,

I'm leaving town.”
“Don't worry,

I'm going.”
“You have such beautiful hands.”

“That's ancient history; the blade went through

but missed the bone.”
“Never mind, darling,

never mind.”
“I don't know

what time it is, and I don't care.”

 

 

My fallen, my turned to dust, my earth,

assumes the shape he has in the photograph:

with a leaf's shadow on his face, with a seashell in his hand,

he sets out toward my dream.

 

He wanders through darknesses extinguished since never,

through emptinesses opened to themselves forever,

through seven times seven times seven silences.

 

He appears on the other side of my eyelids,

in the one and only world that he can reach.

His shot heart beats.

A first wind stirs from his hair.

 

A meadow unspreads between us.

Skies come flying with clouds and birds,

mountains rise silently on the horizon

and a river spurts downward, searching for the sea.

 

You can see so far, so far,

that day and night turn simultaneous,

and all seasons of the year occur at once.

A four-quartered moon unfolds its fan,

snowflakes swarm beside butterflies,

fruit falls from the blossoming tree.

 

We draw closer. In tears,

in smiles, I don't know. Just one step more

and we'll listen to your shell together,

to the roar of a thousand orchestras,

to the roar of our wedding march.

 

 

A drop of water fell on my hand,

drawn from the Ganges and the Nile,

 

from hoarfrost ascended to heaven off a seal's whiskers,

from jugs broken in the cities of Ys and Tyre.

 

On my index finger

the Caspian Sea isn't landlocked,

 

and the Pacific is the Rudawa's meek tributary,

the same stream that floated in a little cloud over Paris

 

in the year seven hundred and sixty-four

on the seventh of May at three
A.M.

 

There are not enough mouths to utter

all your fleeting names, O water.

 

I would have to name you in every tongue,

pronouncing all the vowels at once

 

while also keeping silent—for the sake of the lake

that still goes unnamed

 

and doesn't exist on this earth, just as the star

reflected in it is not in the sky.

 

Someone was drowning, someone dying was

calling out for you. Long ago, yesterday.

 

You have saved houses from fire, you have carried off

houses and trees, forests and towns alike.

 

You've been in christening fonts and courtesans' baths.

In coffins and kisses.

 

Gnawing at stone, feeding rainbows.

In the sweat and the dew of pyramids and lilacs.

 

How light the raindrop's contents are.

How gently the world touches me.

 

Whenever wherever whatever has happened

is written on waters of Babel.

 

 

Job, sorely tried in both flesh and possessions, curses man's fate. It is great poetry. His friends arrive and, rending their garments, dissect Job's guilt before the Lord. Job cries out that he was right-eous. Job does not know why the Lord smote him. Job does not want to talk to them. Job wants to talk to the Lord. The Lord God appears in a chariot of whirlwinds. Before him who had been cloven to the bone, He praises the work of His hands: the heavens, the seas, the earth and the beasts thereon. Especially Behemoth, and Leviathan in particular, creatures of which the Deity is justly proud. It is great poetry. Job listens: the Lord God beats around the bush, for the Lord God wishes to beat around the bush. Job therefore hastily prostrates himself before the Lord. Events now transpire in rapid succession. Job regains his donkeys and camels, his oxen and sheep twofold. Skin grows over his grinning skull. And Job goes along with it. Job agrees. Job does not want to ruin a masterpiece.

 

 

In Heraclitus's river

a fish is busy fishing,

a fish guts a fish with a sharp fish,

a fish builds a fish, a fish lives in a fish,

a fish escapes from a fish under siege.

 

In Heraclitus's river

a fish loves a fish,

your eyes, it says, glow like the fishes in the sky,

I would swim at your side to the sea we will share,

O fairest of the shoal.

 

In Heraclitus's river

a fish has imagined the fish of all fish,

a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish,

a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.

 

In Heraclitus's river

I, the solitary fish, a fish apart

(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),

write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two

whose glittering scales, so fleeting,

may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.

 

 

So he once was. He invented zero.

In an uncertain country. Under a star

now perhaps gone dark. Between dates

to which no one will swear. Without even

a questionable name. Without leaving

beneath his zero any pearls of wisdom

about life, which is like what. Or a legend

that one day he scribbled zero

on a plucked rose and bound it in a bouquet.

That before he died he took to the desert

on a hundred-humped camel. That he nodded off

beneath the palme d'or. That he will awaken

when everything is counted

down to the last grain of sand. What a man.

He escaped our notice through the crack

between fact and fiction. Immune

to every fate. He shakes off

every shape I give him.

Silence grew over him, without a voice's scar.

Absence mimicked the horizon.

Zero writes itself.

 

 

The first display case

holds a stone.

On it we note

a faint scratch.

A matter of chance,

some people say.

 

The second display case

shows a piece of frontal bone.

It cannot be proven—

is it animal or human.

Bones are bones.

Let's move on.

Nothing here.

 

What endures—

just the old resemblance

between a spark struck from a stone

and a star.

Severed by centuries

the space of comparison

remains the same.

 

The space

that lured us from the species,

led us from the sphere of sleep

before we knew the word sleep,

in which whatever lives

is born for always

and dies without death.

 

The space

that turned our head human,

from a spark to a star,

from one to many,

from each to all,

from temple to temple,

and that which has no eyelids

opened in us.

 

The sky rose

from a stone.

A stick branched

into a thicket of endings.

The snake raised its fangs

from the bundle of its reasons.

Time swirled

in the rings of a tree.

Howls of one awakened

multiplied in echoes.

 

The first display case

holds a stone.

The second display case

shows a piece of frontal bone.

We left the animals behind.

Who will leave us.

Through which resemblance.

What compared to what.

 

 

I knock at the stone's front door.