“I know so little of myself,
even less of them,
so I’m stunned
when, in a dream,
I taunt Nietzsche,
on my knees,
calling him “the little minister.”
He doesn’t want to play,
holds his temples in his hands,
like his head is a Faberge egg,
or a soul, not that I know
anything of souls.
On all fours, I can only cry out
a long, ragged neigh, stomping
and violently flinging
back my head—a horse,
whipped into terror,
his front knees buckling
and suddenly praying,
his mane trembling,
a steam rising
from his wounds.”
Christopher Hennessy, from “Nietzsche, Pasolini, & I”
“(till someone’s brains
lungs, liver, spleen
no longer acknowledge him;
no longer have knowledge of him.)”
Hans Faverey, from Against the Forgetting tr. Francis R. Jones
“1.
Digger, the moons
of your nails are
black. You dug
through night, and now
you dig through
dawn. You broke
to find, but now you
break to
break. And what you
mutter—there—
that is no prayer.
2.
Knowledge must have
a shape; therefore it
happens where
light can’t
get through. Where
light is thwarted, bent,
bent back,
resisted by the
form of the
thing, flesh, stem and
shell, says I
would rather be
myself than you.
3.
Digger, do you think
your hunger so
extraordinary? Pale
grubs knot together
in their sleep, you
will never really
part them. They know
what you are. Eyeless,
they keep watch
over your watch.”
— Amelia Klein, “Forage”
“NOT AS ONE who knows the ground
but woken to a standing, ay
rose and held as bird would hold
for want of weather, flight.
Far, the hard light grew.
The us were down in sleep.
Fire had blacked away—
ay saw how none would know me
colding there. Stood and stept
as calf that has no mother-side
but as a weak thing made, fell
and lay in a smaller place to wait.
Where a noise had been
ay let a quiet in.
SHOULDER-HEFTED, left unsteady,
on mine own, ay walked the days,
leaned as in a wind, unstrong,
dumb-struck, shy of noise, still felt
the rock that rocked me shut.
Slow, blown through, an ear,
deep-hearing quiet in the air, an after-clap
of storm, a mourn, a torn-apart, poured out, a thunder
spent. Done by night and bed were as a dent, a wax
burnt down. Ay waited, wasted. Sky loomed,
rain washed hush across the field.
Long-sealed ay could not speak,
but it ran on, a river in me, and made a quiver,
quick, that ay would touch mine tongue to it,
tip-touch to break the run of it, stop the rush
and hum of it, that, deep-held, kept me
silent as a god. Ay am not one, ay mouthed.
COLD HEIGHT, SEED-soaked
in the first fires of day, ay
live toward, show the marks:
auk and owl, insect, horn,
leaf-borne or buried in dirt—
all the sun-soft sheep,
things the night takes away.
Over the orchard, freed from hive,
a bee lifts from its summer bed,
a slit of light one deep,
telling its own stung way.
Small, and it lives toward a swarm,
rare from the cluster and blind.
Age, a parcel of rag, ay drag
under open sky.
As if ay have lived that long.
As if cold and cave and chalk.
As if buried in light holes and soaked with night.
As if by the heat of birds.
Hand, one hand, and ay tape mine chest—
Here mine father is built—
ay pasture hims shadow, tend him,
coming from sleep as all things do
alive toward the first fires of day.”
— Joan Houlihan, from Ay
Where are you going? Ghosted with dust. From where have you come?
The dull assertiveness of the stone heap, like a barren monarchy.
Wolfspider, the size of a hand, encrusted with dirt at the rubble’s edge.
What crosses here goes fanged or spiked and draws its color from the ground.
Nicotine shadow at the edges.
Where are we going? Ghosted with dust. From where have we come?
Like stratigraphic lines, lifted from rock, suspended in air.
What does it mean, a cauterized topography?
One step forward and he is with us. One step back, another realm absorbs him.
The sense of epoch loosened, unstrung.
Each thinking it is the other who recedes like a horizon.
The miraculous cage of bone visible under his skin.
I cannot be discarded, his eyes say.
The photograph like a flute cut to play one note.
In the scrape-out at noon, men fading from brightness, silvered with dust.
I can be read, say the stones, but not by you.
The air burnished, almost mineral, like a thin peel of mica.
A mound in the photograph, an iris in the eye.
What does it mean, a cauterized topography?
To salvage rocks the color of powder from powder the color of rock.
I can be read, say her eyes, but not by you.
As if the landscape had abandoned itself.
Telephone poles stabbing what remains of a hill.
One step forward and we are with them. One step back, another realm absorbs us.
Don’t pick up the stones, he says, because stones belong to the dead.
Nicotine shadows at the edges.
The distance flat as horse-hair plaster, all depth sponged away.
Black hill of tailings.
There is nothing between his eyes and ours, but how to translate that nothing?
Each stone carrying his death sentence into the animate world.
A stone hill, he says, or a bivouac of snuffled stars.
The sense of epoch loosened, unstrung.
Light, stopped in the air.
The shadow of a pole has the same quality as the shadow of a man.
A glance held, an afterglow.
All depth sponged away, the distance flat as horse-hair plaster.
A mound in the photograph, an iris in an eye.
Don’t pick him up, the stones say, because the dead belong to the stones.
Encrusted with dirt at the rubble’s edge: wolfspider the size of a hand.
The shadow of a man has the same quality as the shadow of a pole.
What crosses here goes spiked or fanged and draws its color from the ground.
The air burnished, almost mineral, like a thin peel of mica.
