Wheel With a Single Spoke Read Free Page B

slow
    almost a lifetime of flame
    rises
    to light the pyres, the awaited
    foretold, the savior,
    the lighting of the pyres.

The Fifth Elegy
The temptation of the real
    I was never angry with apples
    for being apples, with leaves for being leaves,
    with shadow for being shadow, with birds for being birds.
    But apples, leaves, shadows, birds,
    all of a sudden, were angry with me.
    See me taken before the court of leaves,
    the court of shadows, apples, birds,
    round courts, flying courts,
    courts cool and thin.
    See me condemned for ignorance,
    boredom, disquiet,
    stasis.
    Sentences written in the language of seeds.
    Indictments sealed
    with the innards of birds,
    cool, ashen atonements, chosen for me.
    I rise, head uncovered,
    and I try to understand what I deserve
    for stupidity . . .
    and I cannot, I cannot understand
    anything,
    and this state itself
    grows angry with me
    and condemns me, in a way impossible to understand,
    to perpetual waiting,
    to harmonize meanings with themselves
    until they take the form of apples, leaves,
    shadows,
    birds.

The Eleventh Elegy
Entry to the Labors of spring
    I.
    Heart larger than the body,
    leaping from all sides at once
    and collapsing from all sides,
    back over the body
    like a shower of lava,
    you, content larger than form, here’s
    self-knowledge, here’s
    why suffering matter takes birth from itself:
    so it can die.
    Only he dies who knows himself,
    only he is born who is
    his own witness.
    I need to run, I told myself,
    but to do that first I should
    pivot my soul
    toward my unmoving ancestors,
    who have withdrawn into the towers of their bones,
    like marrow,
    unmoved
    like all things taken to their end.
    I can run, because they are inside me.
    I will run, because only what is
    unmoved in itself
    can move,
    only he who is alone in himself
    has company and knows the unrevealed heart
    will collapse more powerfully toward its own
    center
    or,
    shattered into planets, will surrender
    to fauna and flora,
    or
    will lie beneath the pyramids,
    like the hidden stomach of a strange breast.
    II.
    Everything is simple, so simple that
    it becomes incomprehensible.
    Everything is so close, so
    close, that
    it slips behind the eyes
    and is seen no more.
    Everything is so perfect
    in spring,
    that only by surrounding it with myself
    can I mark it,
    like expanding grass marked
    by words for the speaking mouth,
    marked by the mouth of the heart,
    by the heart to its seed,
    to that unmoved in itself, identical
    to the pit of the earth
    that extends from itself
    infinite gravitational arms
    and draws everything into itself and suddenly
    into an embrace so powerful
    that through its arms leaps movement.
    III.
    I will run, therefore, in every direction
    at once,
    I will run after my own heart,
    like a chariot
    simultaneously pulled in every direction
    by whipped horses.
    IV.
    I will run until advance, until rush
    itself passes me
    and pulls further ahead of me
    like the fruit’s skin from its seed,
    until running
    will run even within itself, and be still.
    And I will collapse
    over it like a young man
    onto his lover.
    V.
    And once I have let running
    pass me by,
    once
    movement within itself is still
    like stone, or
    better, like mercury
    behind the glass
    of a mirror,
    I will see inside all things,
    I will embrace them with myself,
    all things at once,
    and they
    will throw me back, once
    all that was thing in me
    has been changed, over time, into things.
    VI.
    See me
    remaining what I am,
    with flags of loneliness, with shields of chill,
    back toward myself I run,
    pulling myself from everywhere,
    pulling myself from myself before,
    behind myself, on my right and
    my left, above and
    underneath myself, departing from
    everywhere and giving to
    everywhere signs that will bring me to mind:
    to the sky – stars,
    the earth – air,
    shadows – branches and budding leaves.
    VII.
    . . . odd body, asymmetrical,
    surprised by itself
    in the presence of spheres,
    surprised to stand