The Collected Poems (5 page)

King Midas returns to his palace
but gets no pleasure from the heart of a wise Silenus
stewed in wine
he paces pulls at his beard
and asks old men
—how many days does the ant live
—why does the dog howl before a death
—how high would a mountain be
piled from the bones
of all past animals and humans

Then he summoned a man
who painted on red vases
with a black quail feather
nuptials parades and hunts
who asked by Midas
why he set down the life of shadows
answered:
—because the neck of a horse galloping
is beautiful
and dresses of young girls playing ball
are like a stream alive and inimitable

Let me sit down beside you
entreats the painter of vases
we will talk about people
who in deadly earnest
give to the earth one grain
and gather ten
who repair a sandal and a republic
count stars and obols
write poems and lean down
to pick up from the sand a lost clover

We will drink a little
and philosophize a little
and perhaps we both
who are made of blood and illusion
will finally free ourselves
from the oppressive levity of appearance

 

In the foreground you see
a youth's handsome body

his beard leans on his chest
one knee is pulled up
his arm like a dead branch

he has closed his eyes
he disavows even Eos

her fingers plunged in the air
her hair flying loose
and the contours of her robes
make three circles of sorrow

he has closed his eyes
he disavows his bronze armor

his fine helmet
adorned with blood and a black crest
his broken shield
and spear

he has closed his eyes
he disavows the world

leaves hang in the quiet air
a branch quivers with the shadows of birds flying off
and only the cricket hidden
in Memnon's still living hair
speaks persuasively
in praise of life

 

Nike is most beautiful at the moment
when she hesitates
her right hand beautiful as a command
rests against the air
but her wings tremble

For she sees
a solitary youth
he goes down the long tracks
of a war chariot
on a gray road in a gray landscape
of rocks and scattered juniper bushes

that youth will perish soon
right now the scale containing his fate
abruptly falls
toward the earth

Nike would terribly like
to go up
and kiss him on the forehead

but she is afraid
that he who has never known
the sweetness of caresses
having tasted it
might run off like the others
during the battle

Thus Nike hesitates
and at last decides
to remain in the position
which sculptors taught her
being mightily ashamed of that flash of emotion

she understands
that tomorrow at dawn
this boy must be found
with an open breast
closed eyes
and the acid obol of his country
under his numb tongue

 

All the lines descend into the valley of the palm
into a hollow where bubbles a small spring of fate
Here is the life line Look it races like an arrow
the horizon of five fingers brightened by its stream
which surges forth overthrowing obstacles
and nothing is more beautiful more powerful
than this striving forward

How helpless compared to it is the line of fidelity
like a cry in the night a river in the desert
conceived in the sand and perishing in the sand
Maybe deeper under the skin it continues further
parts the tissue of muscles and enters the arteries
so that we might meet at night our dead
down inside where memory and blood
flow in mineshafts wells chambers
full of dark names

This hill was not here—after all I remember
there was a nest of tenderness as round as if
a hot tear of lead had fallen on my hand
After all I remember hair the shadow of a cheek
frail fingers and the weight of a sleeping head

Who destroyed the nest who heaped up
the mound of indifference which was not here

Why do you press your palm to your eyes
We tell fortunes Who are we to know

 

Go on my son and remember you are walking not flying
wings are only an ornament and you tread on a meadow
that warm gust is the balmy earth of summer
and that colder one is just the running stream
the sky is filled with leaves and little animals

My eyes like two stones fall straight back to earth
and they see the farmer turning over thick clumps
a worm squirming in a furrow
an evil worm severing the plant's ties to the earth

My son that's not true The universe is sheer light
and earth a dish of shadow Look colors play here
dust flies up from the sea mist rises into the skies
a rainbow is now being made from noblest atoms

My arms hurt father from this beating in a void
my numb legs yearn for pine needles hard stones
I cannot look into the sun the way you can father
I who am immersed in the dark rays of the earth

Now Icarus plunges down headlong
his last image the sight of a child's heel
being consumed by the gluttonous sea
Up above his father cries out a name
belonging not to a neck nor to a head
but to a recollection

He was so young he didn't understand wings are just a metaphor
a little wax and feathers and contempt for the laws of gravitation
they can't sustain the body at a height of many feet
The crucial things is that our hearts
powered by heavy blood
should be filled with air
and that is what Icarus would not accept

let us pray

 

There goes a woman
her shawl dappled as a meadow
clasping a paper bag
against her chest

this takes place
at twelve noon
in the loveliest part of town

here tourists are shown
the park with the swan
the villas with gardens
perspectives and roses

There goes a woman
with a bulging bundle
—mother what are you cradling

now she's tripped
and sugar crystals
tip out of the bag

the woman bends down
an expression in her eye
no painter of broken jugs
could ever convey

her dark hand grabs
the spilled treasures
and she pours back
bright drops and dust

How
long
she
stays
down on her knees
as if she wished to gather
the sweetness of the earth
down to the very last grain

 

This is he—Arion—
the Grecian Caruso
concertmaster of the ancient world
expensive as a necklace
or rather as a constellation
singing
to the ocean billows and traders in silks
to the tyrants and mule herders
The crowns blacken on the tyrants' heads
and the sellers of onion cakes
for the first time err in their figures to their own disadvantage

What Arion is singing about
nobody here could say exactly
the essential thing is that he restores world harmony
the sea gently rocks the land
fire talks to water without hatred
in the shadow of one hexameter lie down
wolves and roedeer goshawks and doves
and the child goes to sleep on the lion's mane
as in a cradle
Look how the animals are smiling
People are living on white flowers
and everything is just as good
as it was in the beginning

This is he—Arion
expensive and multiple
cause of giddiness
standing in a blizzard of images
he has eight fingers like an octave
and he sings

Until from the blue in the west
unravel the luminous threads of saffron
which show that night is coming close
Arion with a friendly shake of his head
says good-bye to
the mule herders and tyrants
the shopkeepers and philosophers
and in the harbour mounts the back
of a tame dolphin

—I'll be seeing you—

How handsome Arion is
—say all the girls—
when he floats out to sea
alone
with a garland of horizons on his head

 

Veterans of forty-day floods
tried by the sundering of the heavens
they who saw mountains die
and mice find salvation
now sit out on the pier
and watch the waving grain
beautiful as a waterfall
—it was a fortunate notion
to entrust hope to the birds
this made their faith strong
as a pigeon house

survivors of houses on fire
where men burn like feathers
peer into the insides of skulls
into mindless scrolls of pink anatomy
they who know a body's weight
say
the criminal cat and astronomer
well deserved to lie motionless
a shallow plain levels
the evil and the good

finally we with rainbow clods of earth under our lids
who discern upward motion and downward motion
sacrifices sent up
eyelids cast down
we say
they are both right
those baptized by water
those baptized by fire
will be reconciled by nothingness
or mercy
and only we against whom
the Church fathers would have written pamphlets
contra académicos
only we will meet with a terrible fate
flames and lamentation
for having received a baptism of earth
we were too valiant in our uncertainty

 

After the rain of stars
on the meadow of ashes
they all have gathered under the guard of angels

from a hill that survived
the eye embraces
the whole lowing two-legged herd

in truth they are not many
counting even those who will come
from chronicles fables and the lives of the saints

but enough of these remarks
let us lift our eyes
to the throat of the valley
from which comes a shout

after a loud whisper of explosion
after a loud whisper of silence
this voice resounds like a spring of living water
it is we are told
a cry of mothers from whom children are taken
since as it turns out
we shall be saved each one alone

the guardian angels are unmoved
and let us grant they have a hard job

she begs
—hide me in your eye
in the palm of your hand in your arms
we have always been together
you can't abandon me
now when I am dead and need tenderness
a higher ranking angel
with a smile explains the misunderstanding

an old woman carries
the corpse of a canary
(all the animals died a little earlier)
he was so nice—she says weeping
he understood everything
and when I said to him—
her voice is lost in the general noise

even a lumberjack
whom one would never suspect of such things
an old bowed fellow
catches to his breast an axe
—all my life she was mine
she will be mine here too
she nourished me there
she will nourish me here
nobody has the right
—he says—
I won't give her up

those who as it seems
have obeyed the orders without pain
go lowering their heads as a sign of consent
but in their clenched fists they hide
fragments of letters ribbons clippings of hair
and photographs
which they naively think
won't be taken from them

so they appear
a moment before
the final division
of those gnashing their teeth
from those singing psalms

 

The double truth of all the senses—

a convoy of images passes the eye
they are like a vision under water
and between the black and white
filters the uncertainty of colors
it wavers slightly in the pure air
our seeing is a mirror or a sieve—
a wavering wisdom of moist eyes
seeps through it drop by drop

under sweetness bitterness dozes
so the deranged tongue cries out

in hearing's shell where an ocean
is like a ball of yarn where a white
shadow's silence attracts a stone
just a muddle of stars and leaves

from earth's center a tangled smell
a world between smell and surprise

and touch in its certainty comes
to return to things their stillness
over the ear's lie the eye's chaos
there grows a dam of ten fingers
a hard and faithless mistrust lays
its fingers in the world's wound
to divide thing from appearance

O you most true you alone
can give utterance to love
you alone offer consolation
we are both blind and deaf

—touch grows on the edge of truth

 

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say—I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

 

I walk on the sea-shore
to catch that voice
between the breaking of one wave
and another