The Collected Poems
Page 15
—women gold land don’t get knocked off your horse
a prince did their thinking for them and a wind bore them along
they tore at walls with their bare fingers and with a sudden cry
fell into the void only to return in me
but didn’t I go shopping in art salons
for powders potions masks
the cosmetics of nobility
I held marble up to my eyes Veronese’s greens
I rubbed my ears with Mozart
I trained my nostrils on the musk of old books
in the mirror the face I inherited
a sack of old meats fermenting
medieval cravings and sins
paleolithic hunger and terror
an apple falls not far from the tree
the body is locked into the chain of species
that’s how I lost the tournament with my face
ON MR COGITO’S TWO LEGS
The left leg is normal
you might say optimistic
a little on the short side
laddish
with rippling muscles
and a well-shaped calf
the right
Lord have mercy—
skinny
with two scars
one along the Achilles tendon
the other oval
a pale pink
an ignoble memento of flight
the left
given to leaps
balletic
too fond of life
to put itself at any risk
the right
nobly rigid
mocking danger
and so
on both legs
the left comparable to Sancho Panza
and the right
calling to mind the wandering knight
Mr Cogito
goes
through the world
staggering slightly
MEDITATIONS ON FATHER
His face menacing in a cloud over the waters of childhood
(so seldom he held my warm head in his hand)
given to be believed in forgiving no faults
for he felled forests and cleared pathways
he held a lantern high when we went into the night
I thought that I would sit at his right hand
we would part the light from the darkness
and sit in judgment on the living
—it was to be otherwise
a junk dealer carried his throne off on a cart
and a deed of ownership a map of our holdings
he was born a second time tiny very frail
with translucent skin and slight cartilage
he shrank his body that I might receive it
in a lowly place there’s a shadow under stone
he himself grows in me we eat our defeats
we burst out laughing
when they say how little it takes
to be reconciled
MOTHER
He fell from her lap like a ball of yarn. He unwound himself in a hurry and beat it into the distance. She held onto the beginning of life. She wound it on a finger hospitable as a ring; she wished to shelter it. He rolled down steep slopes, sometimes labored up mountains. He came back all tangled up and didn’t say a word. He will never return to the sweet throne of her lap.
Her outspread arms glow in the dark like an old town.
SISTER
Owing to a negligible age difference childish proximity shared baths the mysteries of fluffy hair and soft skin the little Cogito discovered that he could be his sister (it was as simple as switching their places at the table when his parents were out and Gran let them run wild) and she own his name his bow his boy’s bike his nose luckily their noses differed and lack of physical likeness allowed them to avoid a dramatic sequence of events it ended with the sense of touch touch didn’t open up and young Cogito remained inside his skin’s borders
a seed of doubt subverting principium individuationis
was deeply lodged in him however and one afternoon
on Legions Street thirteen-year-old Cogito observing
a horse-cab driver
felt he was the man so thoroughly
that he sprouted reddish whiskers
and the cold whip stung his hand
MR COGITO AND THE PEARL
Sometimes Mr Cogito calls to mind, not without emotion, his youthful march on perfection, those juvenile gestures per aspera ad astro. One time, for example, he was rushing to a lecture when a little pebble got into his shoe. It lodged itself maliciously between the live flesh and the sock. Reason dictated that the intruder be removed, but the principle of amor fati commanded the opposite, that it be endured. He chose the second, heroic course.
At the outset it didn’t look so bad, just a nuisance, no more; but after a time the heel appeared in his field of consciousness, and this at the moment when the young Cogito was laboriously trying to grasp the professor’s train of thought elaborating Plato’s concept of the Idea. The heel grew; swelled, pulsed, turned pale pink to sunset purple, and drove from his mind not only Plato’s idea but all other ideas as well.
In the evening before going to bed he shook the foreign body from his sock. It was a small, cold, yellow grain of sand. The heel on the other hand was swollen, hot, and dark with pain.
SENSE OF IDENTITY
If he had any sense of identity it was with a stone
a sandstone not too porous a light luminous gray
with a thousand eyes of flint
(an absurd comparison a stone sees with its skin)
if he felt any deep relation then it was to a stone
it was not at all the idea of immutability the stone
changed lazy in the sun it took on light like a moon
when a storm built it darkened to blue like a cloud
then drank rain thirstily those fisticuffs with water
sweet destruction a war of elements clash of forces
casting off of its own nature this drunken stability
were both beautiful and humbling
so in the end it sobered in air cleansed by lightning
bashful sweat the transient cloud of erotic passion
MR COGITO CONSIDERS A RETURN TO HIS NATIVE TOWN
If I went back there
I would probably not find
a single shadow of my old home
nor the trees of childhood
nor a cross with an iron plaque
a bench on which I murmured incantations
nor a single thing that belongs to us
all that survived
is a flagstone
with a chalk circle
I stand in the middle
on one leg
the moment before jumping
I cannot grow up
though years pass
and planets and wars
clamor overhead
I stand in the middle
still as a monument
on one leg
before a jump into finality
the chalk circle rusts
like old blood
around it grow mounds
of ash
up to the arms
up to the mouth
MR COGITO REFLECTS ON SUFFERING
All attempts to avert
the so-called cup of bitterness—
by mental effort
frenzied campaigns on behalf of stray cats
breathing exercises
religion—
let you down
you have to consent
gently bow your head
not wring your hands
use suffering mildly with moderation
like a prosthetic limb
without false shame
but without pride also
don’t brandish your stump
over other people’s heads
don’t knock your white cane
on the
panes of the well-fed
drink an extract of bitter herbs
but not to the dregs
be careful to leave
a few gulps for the future
accept it
but at the same time
isolate it in yourself
and if it is possible
make from the stuff of suffering
a thing or a person
play
with it
of course
play
joke around with it
very solicitously
as with a sick child
cajoling in the end
with silly tricks
a wan
smile
MR COGITO’S ABYSS
At home it’s always safe
but just over the threshold
when Mr Cogito goes out
on his morning stroll
he meets—the abyss
this is not the abyss of Pascal
this is not the abyss of Dostoevsky
this is an abyss
to Mr Cogito’s size
fathomless days
fear-fraught days
it follows him like a shadow
waits in front of the bakery
in the park it reads the paper
over Mr Cogito’s shoulder
irksome as eczema
affectionate as a dog
too shallow to swallow
his head arms and legs
maybe one day
the abyss will fill out
the abyss will mature
and be serious
if only he knew
what water it drank
what grain to feed it
now
Mr Cogito
could pick up
a few fistfuls of sand
and fill it up
but he doesn’t
and so when
he goes home
he leaves the abyss
at the threshold
covering it deliberately
with a scrap of old cloth
MR COGITO AND PURE THOUGHT
Mr Cogito attempts
to achieve pure thought
at least before sleep
the attempt in itself bears
the seed of its own defeat
so when he is nearing
the state in which thought is like water
the vast and pure water
on an indifferent shore
the water suddenly wrinkles
and a wave throws up
tin cans
driftwood
a wisp of someone’s hair
if truth be told Mr Cogito
isn’t wholly without fault
he couldn’t tear
his inner eye
from the mail box
his nostrils could smell the sea
crickets tickled his ear
and he felt her absent hand under his belt
he was ordinary like the rest
his thoughts were furnished
the softness of a hand on an armrest
the furrow of tenderness
on a cheek
someday
some other day
when he is cold
he will attain the state of satori
and he will be as the masters recommend
vacant and
astonishing
MR COGITO READS THE NEWSPAPER
The front page reports
120 soliders were killed
the war was long
you get used to it
right next to this news
of a spectacular crime
with the killer’s photo
Mr Cogito’s gaze
moves with indifference
over the soldiers’ hecatomb
to plunge with great relish
into the quotidian macabre
a thirty-year-old farmworker
in a state of manic depression
murdered his own wife
and two small children
we are told the exact
way they were killed
the position of bodies
and the other details
it’s no use trying to find
120 lost men on a map
a distance too remote
hides them like a jungle
they don’t speak to the imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero on the end
turns them into an abstraction
a theme for further reflection:
the arithmetic of compassion
MR COGITO AND THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT
Thoughts cross the mind
a common idiom has it
the common idiom
overestimates thoughts’ mobility
a majority of them
stand motionless
in a dull landscape
of bleak hillocks
and withered trees
sometimes they reach
the rushing river of someone else’s thoughts
they stand on the bank
on one leg
like hungry herons
mournfully
they recall dried-up springs
they circle around
looking for grains
they don’t cross
because they won’t get anywhere
they don’t cross
because there’s nowhere to get to
they sit on the rocks
wringing their hands
under the low
overcast
firmament
of the skull
HOUSES ON THE OUTSKIRTS
On overcast autumn afternoons Mr Cogito likes to visit the grimy neighborhoods at the edge of town. There is, he says, no purer source of melancholy.
Houses on the outskirts with rings under your windows
houses which quietly cough up
shivers of plaster
houses with thinning hair
and a sickly complexion
only chimneys are dreaming
their tapering lamentation
reaches the edge of a forest
the shore of the great water
I’d like to think of names for you
fill you with fragrances of India
the fire of the Bosphorus
the babbling of waterfalls
houses on the outskirts with sunken temples
houses chewing on crusts of bread
cold as the sleep of a crippled man
your stairs are palm trees of dust
houses forever for sale
bad luck motels
houses who never saw a show
rats of houses on the outskirts
lead them to the ocean’s shore
let them sit in the warm sand
let them see a subtropical night
let waves reward them with a thunderous ovation
such as befits a squandered life
MR COGITO’S ALIENATIONS
Mr Cogito holds in his arms
the warm amphora of a head
the rest of the body is hidden
seen only by touch
he gazes at the sleeping head
strange but full of tenderness
yet again
he ascertains with amazement
that one apart from him exists
impenetrable
as a stone
with borders
which open
for just a moment
before a sea casts it
onto a rocky shore
with its own blood
its stranger’s dreams
fitted out with its own skin
Mr Cogito lays
the sleeping head
delicately aside
so as not to leave
any fingerprints
on the cheeks
and turns away
&nb
sp; lonely
into the whitewashed sheets
MR COGITO OBSERVES A DECEASED FRIEND
He was breathing heavily
the crisis was supposed to come at night
it was twelve noon
Mr Cogito stepped out into the corridor
to smoke a cigarette
first he shifted the pillow
and smiled at his friend
he was breathing heavily
his fingers
moved
on the quilt
when he came back
his friend was gone
in his place
lay something else
with its head tilted
its eyes bulging
the usual commotion
a doctor came running
injected a needle
which filled up
with dark blood
Mr Cogito
waited a moment longer
staring at what remained
it was empty
like a sack
it was shrinking
more and more
squeezed by unseen tongs
crushed by a different time
if he had turned to stone
a heavy marble sculpture
impassive and dignified
what a relief it would be
he lay on a narrow islet
of annihilation
torn from the trunk
shed like a cocoon
lunchtime
plates rang
the Angelus
no angels descended
The Upanishads consoled
when his word
enters thought
thought breath
breath fire
fire the highest divinity
then he can no longer
know
so he could not know
he stood impenetrable
with a bundle of stark mystery
at the gates of the valley
THE QUOTIDIAN SOUL
In the morning mice scamper
around the head
on the floor of the head
scraps of conversations
detritus of an epic
enter
the room’s muse
in a blue apron
sweeping
my master
receives better guests
Heraclitus of Ephesus let’s say
or the prophet Isaiah
today no one is calling
my master paces nervously
talking to himself
ripping up innocent papers
in the evening he goes out his destination unknown