Map (38 page)

 

 

He doesn't arrive en masse.

Doesn't gather gregariously.

Doesn't convene communally.

Doesn't celebrate congenially.

 

Doesn't wrest from himself

a choral voice.

Doesn't declare to all concerned.

Doesn't affirm in the name.

Investigations aren't conducted

in his presence—

who's for, and who's against,

thank you, none opposed.

 

His head is missing

where head meets head,

step in step, shoulder to shoulder

and ever onward nonstop

with a pocketful of leaflets

and a product made of hops.

 

Where it's sweetness and light

only to start,

since one crowd quickly

mixes with the next,

and who is to say

on the following day,

whose flowers, whose bricks,

whose huzzahs, whose sticks.

 

Unremarked.

Unspectacular.

He's employed by City Sanitation.

At first light

from the site of the event

he sweeps up, carries off, tosses in the truck,

what's been hammered onto half-dead trees,

trampled into the exhausted grass.

 

Tattered banners,

broken bottles,

burned effigies,

gnawed bones,

rosaries, whistles, and condoms.

 

Once he found a dove cage in the bushes.

He took it home

so he could

keep it empty.

 

 

I, Number Three Plus Four Divided by Seven,

am renowned for my vast linguistic knowledge.

I now recognize thousands of languages

employed by extinct people

in their histories.

 

Everything that they recorded with their signs,

even when crushed under layers of disasters,

I extract, reconstruct

in its original form.

 

Not to boast,

but I even read lava

and scan ashes.

 

I explain on a screen

each object mentioned,

when it was produced,

and what from, and what for.

 

And solely on my own initiative,

I peruse the occasional letter

and correct its

spelling errors.

 

I admit—certain words

do cause me difficulty.

For example I still cannot explain precisely

the states called “feelings.”

 

Likewise “soul,” a peculiar expression.

I've determined for now that it is a kind of fog

purportedly more lasting than mortal organisms.

 

But the word “am” gives me the most trouble.

It appears to be an ordinary function,

conducted daily, but not collectively,

in the present prehistoric tense,

specifically, in the continuous,

although as we know discontinued long ago.

 

But will this do for a definition?

I feel rumbling in my linkages and grinding of my screws.

My button to Head Office smokes but won't light up.

 

Perhaps my pal Two Fifths of Zero Fractured by Half

will provide brotherly assistance.

True, he's a known lunatic,

but he's got ideas.

 

 

There are those who conduct life more precisely.

They keep order within and around them.

A way for everything, and a right answer.

 

They guess straight off who's with who, who's got who,

to what end, in what direction.

 

They set their stamp on single truths,

toss unnecessary facts into the shredder

and unfamiliar persons

into previously designated files.

 

They think as long as it takes,

not a second more,

since doubt lies lurking behind that second.

 

And when they're dismissed from existence,

they leave their place of work

through the appropriately marked exit.

 

Sometimes I envy them

—it passes, luckily.

 

 

A scorching day, a doghouse and a dog on a chain.

A full dish of water a few steps off.

But the chain is too short and the dog can't reach.

Let's add one more detail to the picture,

the much longer,

less visible chains

that allow us freely to pass by.

 

 

They run to each other with open arms,

laughing, calling: At last! At last!

Both in heavy winter wraps,

thick caps,

scarves,

gloves,

boots,

but only for us.

For each other—naked.

 

 

We eat another life so as to live.

A corpse of pork with departed cabbage.

Every menu is an obituary.

 

Even the kindest of souls

must consume, digest something killed

so that their warm hearts

won't stop beating.

 

Even the most lyrical of poets.

Even the strictest ascetics

chew and swallow something

that once kept itself growing.

 

I can't quite reconcile this with good gods.

Unless they're naïve,

unless they're gullible,

and gave all power over the world to nature.

And she, frenzied, sends us hunger,

and where hunger begins,

innocence ends.

 

Hunger instantly joins forces with the senses:

taste, smell, and touch, and sight,

since we don't fail to notice what dishes

are served on which plates.

 

Even hearing plays a part

in what takes place,

since cheerful chatter often rises at the table.

 

 

Everyone sometime has somebody close die,

between to be or not to be

he's forced to choose the latter.

 

We can't admit that it's a mundane fact,

subsumed in the course of events,

in accordance with procedure:

 

sooner or later on the daily docket,

the evening, late night, or first dawn docket;

 

and explicit as an entry in an index,

as a statute in a codex,

as any chance date

on a calendar.

 

But such is the right and left of nature.

Such, willy-nilly, is her omen and her amen.

Such are her instruments and omnipotence.

 

And only on occasion

a small favor on her part—

she tosses our dead loved ones

into dreams.

 

 

Twenty-seven bones,

thirty-five muscles,

around two thousand nerve cells

in every tip of all five fingers.

It's more than enough

to write
Mein Kampf

or
Pooh Corner.

 

 

Yes, I remember that wall

in our demolished town.

It jutted almost up to the fifth floor.

A mirror hung on the fourth,

an impossible mirror,

unshattered, firmly attached.

 

It didn't reflect anybody's face,

no hands arranging hair,

no door across the room,

nothing you could call

a place.

 

As if it were on vacation—

the living sky gazed in it,

busy clouds in the wild air,

the dust of rubble washed by shining rains,

birds in flight, stars, sunrises.

 

And like any well-made object,

it functioned flawlessly,

with an expert lack of astonishment.

 

 

I dreamed I was looking for something,

maybe hidden somewhere or lost

under the bed, under the stairs,

under an old address.

 

I dug through wardrobes, boxes and drawers

pointlessly packed with stuff and nonsense.

 

I pulled from my suitcases

the years and journeys I'd picked up.

 

I shook from my pockets

withered letters, litter, leaves not addressed to me.

 

I ran panting

through comforting, discomfiting

displaces, places.

 

I floundered through tunnels of snow

and unremembrance.

 

I got stuck in thorny thickets

and conjectures.

 

I swam through air

and the grass of childhood.

 

I hustled to finish up

before the outdated dusk fell,

the curtain, silence.

 

In the end I stopped knowing