Wheel With a Single Spoke Read Free Page A

time
    impaled on a sunray.
    VII.
    I fell into my heart
    like sand through an hourglass.
    I fell into my child’s heart
    like a horse into winter snow.
    I fell into a heart that
    existed less from
    touching me
    and fell more quiet.
    Each beat was a further wave,
    and I swam, swam, and every blow
    of my arm pushed
    the shores
    further from my surroundings.
    I swam, I swam
    in the sea of innocence,
    loneliness of past radiance.
    I swam, in a hovering
    transparent ocean, I swam.
    VIII.
    What am I doing, I asked myself, what am I doing
    among the glimmers of old innocence
    these tips of light, rattling
    dead spectacles, unraveled
    in lonely spaces? . . .
    It is my present, more alive
    than reveling light,
    I sense the advent of even greater miracles
    more than the ordinary years
    of my life’s beginning: rhomboids, lines
    traveling the cold tips of light . . .
    So I pulled myself out of the gentle mirage
    rarefied like the air over great rocks
    when the vision of light decorated my eye
    with an extra brow.
    IX.
    Everything goes up from silver.
    The mysteries of icy winds had been abolished.
    I added air to air, green, to leaves,
    love, to hearts, sky, to grass,
    but more important, another presence
    to the present.
    Everything began from this fulfillment.
    Hope was thicker than light.
    That which conquered became real
    like a solemn preparation
    for a sunrise
    reflected in a newborn’s eye.
    Everything took shape from that scream
    pouring out of things, which,
    with them, became the things.
    I love you, I shouted, present moment of my life,
    and my shout
    shattered into comets.

The Second Elegy, in the Style of the Getes
for Vasile Pârvan
    Every rotten tree trunk had a god.
    If a stone cracked open, fast
    they put a god in there.
    All it took was for a bridge to break
    and a god went in the gap,
    or for the street to have a pothole
    and a god went in there.
    Never cut your hand or foot,
    not by mistake or on purpose.
    They will put a god in the wound,
    like they do everywhere, in every place,
    they will put a god in there
    and tell us to bow, because he
    protects everything that leaves itself behind.
    Take care, O warrior, do not lose
    your eye,
    because they will come and put
    a god in the socket,
    and he will stay there, turned to stone, and we
    will move our souls to praise him . . .
    And even you will uproot your soul
    to praise him like you would a stranger.

The Fourth Elegy
The battle of the visceral and the real
    I.
    Once vanquished without,
    the Medieval Era withdrew into
    the red and white cells of my blood.
    Into a cathedral with pulsing walls it withdrew,
    where it constantly emits and absorbs believers
    in an absurd cycle
    through an absurd area,
    and feeds on pieces of the moon
    in its desire to exist
    it gnaws on them in secret, at night,
    while the eyes of the world sleep
    and
    only the teeth of those who talk in their sleep
    appear in the dark,
    like a meteor shower
    glistening,
    they rise and fall in rhythm.
    Once vanquished without,
    the Medieval Era withdrew into me
    and
    my own body does not
    understand me anymore
    and
    my own body hates me,
    so that it can continue to exist
    it hates me.
    Thus
    it hurries to fall
    asleep,
    one evening after the next;
    and in winter
    ever more powerful, it wraps itself
    in layers of ice,
    quaking and beating and
    drowning me deep in itself
    trying
    to kill me so it could be free
    and not-killing me,
    still be lived by someone.
    II.
    But pyres are stacked everywhere inside me,
    waiting,
    and long, shadowy processions
    wear auras of pain.
    Pain of a world torn in two
    so it can pass through my eyes, two.
    Pain of sounds of the world torn
    in two,
    so they can beat my eardrums, two.
    Pain of smells of the world
    torn in two,
    so they can reach my nostrils, two.
    And you, oh you, inner reshaping,
    you, paired halves, like
    the embrace of a man and his woman,
    oh you, and you, and you, and you,
    the solemn smack
    of halves torn apart,
    whose slow flame, so