Woods and Chalices (4 page)

 

Isaac Luria wasn't for food.

He was for strong ingredients

in an obscure diet

like hair, bonbons.

He smelled sweet and emptied himself, hugged.

He stooped under the water because he sang.

 

Brahmins came for the signet.

Roe deer drank off layers of water.

Crickets still had extra buckets

on their backs, they poured themselves.

 

Sometimes, an entire bucket would roll off

a clumsy cricket, with the sponge.

Before, the sponge swam in the water in the bucket

on the cricket's back under the water.

 

Light and light do not touch.

The belly of God is between, totally stuffed.

He barely breathes and unfolds.

Sometimes a butterfly's wing tickles him

when he starts to eat his own pupa.

You don't have the right to eat even the filly

of the little paw. Nathan's headboard is in Prague.

God knows if he sleeps peacefully. The little paw

wears out and drinks by the stone. The will flies around

the birch. The firewood is weak from waiting.

Are the green birds already throwing up at Komna?

To want and wish to follow into a duvet.

Push-ups are done there. Towns are built

there and shells are sought, the handcarts

in the mines prepare. Did I comfort

you then? Do you still wonder,

when did I comfort you? There were needles

all around and a spruce and soft moss

and as now: spring was announcing itself.

Strips of thin plate tissue are love

without a cell. Snails gush saliva

and toads. They glaze a cotton wad

for the orthodox church growing on

white sand and from bones. Madam

Yaremenko says there was no right

tone. She missed the czarist gestures

from Bijela Crkva. Katarina liked

Onjegin and Ivan the Terrible lions.

Karadjordjeviĉes killed the Cincars.

The Hellenes lasted on vases.

I reached with a hand under the napkins.

There was straw, and here and there some

gefilte fish. Send me the recipe for borscht.

Sand and rollerblades and a tailor,

he keeps bedsprings in the pigment and the mouth.

It seems he thwarted the upholsterer.

Do you keep flour, too? Do any flowers fall

on its head? In the narrow streets they're tall.

What if a gas pump hit someone

walking the street? He didn't walk. He didn't

walk, it just happened this way, what if

it didn't happen? Little donkeys

keep coming back. They bray before evening.

The door opens, the dung doesn't disturb.

Frogs approach Porta di Leone

and we quelled the mosquito with poplars.

They grew up under Mussolini.

Ron's land is veiled by a padlock.

Men are on guns.

Time doesn't have a dark suit anymore,

 

cows have stovepipes in their stomachs.

Multiplied, they give a cleaver.

A white meadow, white millet,

 

white millet for brother horses.

I snacked on a strap.

The cave got larger.

 

The blueness didn't start to tremble only around

birds, the bird itself turned

blue, constituent.

 

He invented a typewriter

on a vacuum, a tunnel in a cave

that failed. Bill Gates

 

sealed off his ear. The hut

changes into fear. Fear

opens itself into the dark slippage of cards.

 

I wanted to oblige my friend

so he could play bridge.

The pea, too, is a miracle of the Trinity.

Hey, monarch, ferry me across

the river. A nettle nips, a nettle

does not nip, a nettle

 

does not die from frost. We gurgle

tar, still unborn

piglet with pretty and white and long

 

hair, else

sorrow, sores, pain,

and vertigo.

 

Do you also fight for her like a lion?

For screams I'm patriotic.

Sidewalks are kind.

 

The corners of sidewalks are kind

to invalids. To return love to the blind.

To make it dewy, to make it

 

seen, to make it watered

by their gazes. To return sight to the blind.

I will thrust the smell of river sand.

Parafiled little wretch on a morbid plank.

Bronze radiates. It pours from leaves and creaks,

rends grease.
Phantasia kataleptikè?

Rabbits, snow, bushes, boots leak,

I lie unconscious by the river. Outer space

gulped dumplings. The smell was constant.

Inside we stored pieces of gold and wiped,

wiped river stones.
Is it worth

tipping?
Certainly. Then where is

the sail that cleans the gazelle's leap? We leap

through soot. Through flaming hoops,

twice. The animals' skin crumbles in the cinema.

The slippery surface turns and changes.

The podium creaks. The road is fresh and aches.

The act is luminous. Out of wire, out of

sage, out of gray green puffs of air.

I dreamed Poof had brambles instead of

fur. The foam had patience.

Did you find a chanterelle? With every layer

of night a little coat is pulled on.

The word made the river and the waterfall

and the power plant and the mill. The Mitchourins

already to the Mesopotamians. They rolled

rocks in front of a town gate. They stood

on a hoop. The space between the word

and heralds (the shoes pinched) was changed

by the view. By the pressure on the skin

of olive trees' drums starting to ski on the wilderness.

The poem shines the saw. I don't know it

by heart. The spit is merry and embraced,

soaked with bast. The white one wants, the dowry

wants, you climb and hurtle on spikes.

In front of Agnes Martin's canvas (Pace

Wildenstein) I came across two

dervishes. They were Turks. They had

hair combed like a black apple.

Are white caps humble?

Isn't the strike the sun brings on beams

(laid down with force) too dangerous?

I kiss the earth. Deepen the air

and dust. I shift gears

and stand up. Lapis lazuli blots me.

Only protosynaptic measures have blackened

God's blueness. Nightmare is balsam sleep.

Rivers smell fragrant, the gallows. I'm worth the brow.

Weary and wooden. How are the legs?

Some say they're real.

 

Will he snatch a bigger slice of bread of God's love?

The sour cherry is a steamship's body.

Panta rei
sleeps.

Overnight snowfall filled everything.

The pools are emeralds.

I talked to people

with noble mouths.

 

They brought cymbals and bronze,

a chafer wrapped in stiff paper,

they swung it in a handcart and sang,

we heard how the fortresses were knocked down.

The dust from the ruins is still damp.

 

We burned down and built from

the shit of camels and cows.

Yesterday on Elizabeth Street I saw

a man who had such a hat.

 

At Starbucks it truly smells

of the roasteries of Trieste, the aroma

they first carried away to Seattle.

We were still talking about two

 

supermodels (about cow dung),

hairstyles, little braids, goggles,

about the carefully outworn,

and I injected into myself

this text into the photo:

 

Jorge Vegas, soft shadow friend

whisper fire. Caress the blood

within. Set free the buddha

cat in me, into ginger

haven, sugar stone smile . . .

Penetrate, don't outwit. One iota,

two people's houses. Laughlin. I'm blotting.

From everything wrecked, white gray glances.

The little mill didn't spin. It was all about a heavy

paw. It's purified. Forged by faith and poured.

The little coat is not rickety. It's cast in a green

and silver building. If you break into a chafer's belly

with your head, the water comes springing.
Torna,

which propel hard drives, are from garlic.

As if I'd have more iron inside my palm.

Water is always young, excluded, and self-

pleased. Ken Jacobs arranged the red plateau

on which Norse was written, burning

on Chambers Street. Egypt cut itself.

Noble little grain, farina,

dark edge of gold icons,

it rolls.

 

Is the bell mucus, the blackboard stored

with the petition flower?

 

Mormons have all the names in the gullet.

But with me the watch is warm, boy-scout-like.

 

Jure Detela was an athlete.

All night we sat on the bench in Zvezda Park,

I guarded him and convinced him

not to go and clip the bears' fence.

This was wrestling with an angel.

 

His eyes poured out of him. It was rustling

when the morning rose.

 

He was comforted, fed,

and willing.

Beheaded.

 

As if he did clip the fence.

When I returned from Mexico, I looked like

death. My mouth collapsed

and disintegrated. I was paying a penalty

for my sins, my palate had dissolved.

I could touch my brain with my tongue.

It was painful, horrible, and sweet.

While Svetozar sat outside in the waiting room,

I tore down the instrument case.

No, I am not being precise: he left the office

before me, I only suspected who he was, I didn't even

know him. When I sat in the chair,

my energy tore down the instrument case.

To pass from world to world

means an earthquake. Yesterday he died.

How does the butler configure?

He eats out of a hand. He strokes his nickname,

the number six. The beak is rasped,

 

sawdust whistles under right angles. It's yellow

where it isn't cut through. Softly,

we could stuff daisies into it, and as with hair

 

and fingernails, there is no pain.

The pain is in the missing part.

In the missing part the impaled daisy

 

flutters. Is the butler

then a Venetian mask? Clarissas,

pacing solemnly between the power plant

 

and the grilles in Siena.

In Assisi. I was steered into the wheel.

And when I, drowsy on the piazza,

 

thought of Pincherle, nibbled

gelati and
fave
and massaged

my heart, I realized

 

the nave is empty. There are no side

naves. There is no roof. Between the sky

and the pavement there is not even a tiny circle.

Vanilla, the ruin, house of silence, threads.

The starling stipples the sky and knocks down granite.

It eats stars. Small, dirty boxes

full of worms. Meccas flap.

Dervishes are thimbles on neighbors.

In the hall there's a dome. In the dome

there are boxsprings overturned.

I.e., turned voraciously.

The mind has no swings.

It's wacky, frozen in lianas.

When they gash, they're like doorknobs.

The flame in them burns.

The worms get a tarp on their eyes,

cows eat the millet on the tarp,

not shrubs.

 

The louse creeps into them and falls asleep.

What did we fly over?

Which boxes did we fly over?

Which yellow boxes did we fly over?

Vases pull lightbulbs from their mouths, shine in white.

 

The clause is pressed into the gums.

Hats cover only undisciplined mice,

the opposite of what we'd expect.

The axis is unavoidable.

 

Is that you, caraway seed?

What did we fly over?

At first I was shaking like a switch in water

because of “the chain of accidents.” My second thought

was that I'd gladly be as systematic

 

as Swedenborg was. Was the frame clear

and did I accept it, though all the zones

of my body had yet to go through the slot? Immediately after—

 

I saw it in a flash—angels are censorship

and fog, merely a field of space that hauls you

toward the center. They quickly paled and glued

 

in a lump. I felt physical hands,

they caught me gently under the armpits. The air

whirred, but not as if the firm body

 

would go through, it was as if someone were dragging me

through milk. They all expected me, though

they noticed my physical presence only

 

gradually: first the old, then the middle-aged,