"The poet is of no party." Baudelaire
for Lou
1
His message, recorded by the disciples
It’s one thing to seek a stone from a stone, walking around the edict that moonlit night. It’s one thing or it’s two—a canvas (a type of engraving) then outlay of dark stairway thru forest. It’s another thing to sing of solid matter without recourse to fainting.
O, this is the structure to H City, three is the binding number, four is never said. This is my justice—I kiss each edifice—my coda to delight, my last soliloquy before the countdown flying shotgun in an inner tube with storm cowboys.
2
After meeting his daughter
In the movie the fort was like a constellation (lights strung along the battlements), the hills we’d driven through. Collapsed on contact, diaphanous bodies. I touched you and heard only breathing.
Yes, _____, we walked at the lakeside watching the maniac lasso stones to sell for indulgences. I got your hurdy-gurdy, but the waves of the bay swallowed it as I read your father’s diary.
Just one equation inside, I nodded off—a broken mind’s defeat: the area of infinity from zero to infinity equals … No more conundrums—everyone was dancing, holding scythes and drumsticks, mouths wet from kissing. I went outside, counted memories returned from the frontier.
I lived like Tantalus staunching daybreak with sponges.
3
Formal Theory of the Famous Philosopher K
You depended upon (this was saturation): Person A says to Person B. Who hears it is subjective. You depended upon a humid day’s tasks slipped into a pneumatic tube, perpendicular exit.
Hollow City, you depended upon. The remaining priests smoked cheroots playing golf. Plausible corroboration, you depended upon. Asked the child how she knew it was real (my leg) I can touch it … Asked the child about the air I breathe it …
You depended upon the sky? Same as the air, stupid … On the shore after the embargo, you depended upon crushed crabs (blue) scavenged for lineaments.
4
Recruited to manage and spearhead the establishment of the Emperor’s next Ground-Force, a note after returning
Born of the Emperor’s Rearguard, I learned to read on a patrol pontoon at sea. Among us there was a saying, He who doesn’t eat at daybreak dies first. Afterwards our furniture was modern. My mother had her chaise lounge. My father cleaned his tongue with a bronze spatula.
The Emperor’s name was Juvenilia, the Antithetical King. His job was forensic misery: to draw with charcoal the criminals hung from the courtyard’s tree.
We returned to our village in the hills, called it Ordzhonikidze, though others called it what they would. Examining us, the doctor said, You’ve again drunk from ditches … so I told him the story of the production apparatus.
On the dock, the doctor’s wife served tea to the Famous Philosopher K who mouthed the words, This is the gift of speech … This the gift of speech …
5
After the regeneration of plutonium, we received word of the new campaign
From out of closets set our moccasins, wrapped them in twine. Down at the river stripped bark from tree backs, tore down saplings, pissed onto rocks.
That night we attended the lecture of the Famous Philosopher K who spoke about what it takes to make a friend and keep him. He kept stumbling from the teleprompter, repeating his quaint provincial phrase, Bulbuls sing softly but a magpie brings good luck … bulbuls sing softly but a magpie …
Someone passed around a tablet, on it the word MAD!! A woman in the balcony laughed convulsively. The radiators, their old pipes clinking and chirruping, muffled the sound of the philosopher’s wandering words.
At home I turned on our national opera about a businessman who travels to the moon by godsend—our nation foremost among those honoring spacecraft.
6
Yes, the Famous Philosopher K was pressed into duty as our emissary to Outer Space …
Sutured to the root of zero, our camp clung to the mountainside. In the wind, the loose yellow plastic beat and whipped. The loose red plastic beat and whipped, the orange plastic, the pink. No one could have imagined the utter uniformity of sound.
In Venezia that term the Famous Philosopher K asked only three questions sloshing in rainboots through flooded Saint Mark’s Square. He carried a red handkerchief with Chinese lettering, a gift from a monk he’d met in Xanadu. Professor! Professor! his groupies clamored, blonde-headed, curly-haired, noses like speculums.
We saw the spaceship being built, its toilet a closet with a screen outside. Orbit set at 200 miles from Earth. In the tent, I lay on my back, dreaming of anchovies, wondering, Why make sand? Why make snow? On clear mornings the mountain above us still like a hemorrhage into or out of heaven.
7
Sunset, Midwinter Holidays
Pushed through the mendicants hovelling by the castle-gate. Up onto the battlements, tourists with their pith helmets and salty brows.
Two students practice the Imperial Dialectic, Behold the Manchester of our country! Seeing me they smile and nod, come over, hand me the most recent manifesto. Ink so cheap it bleeds onto my hand (illegible), paper not fit for the toilet.
We sponsor
Back-to-the-Land
We are
Back-to-the-Land …
I don’t care, I answer.
They stare at my book-cover wondering about the sedition of sedition. I ask them if they know of the Famous Philosopher K. They shake their heads, extend necks to hawk loogies from the castle-wall. I breathe in, breathe out, concentrating on the holy syllable … MU.
8
Was to be fought by remote
We thought it ridiculous to replace the cavalry with seagulls carrying sensors. We cobbled together a fortnight’s provisions.
Out to the stone citadels in the mountains, each family with their own, each side of the valley, escarpment without foothold—broken stones, mudslides. We stayed in the dark, half-starved, rancid. There was no book reading.
At night the children crept to the citadel’s top, looked into the heavens, pointed at stars they mistook for the Famous Philosopher K’s emissary spaceship. We sang lullabies over bouillon soup, played number games, counted primes.
9
Passage to Outer Space
Ja ja, they said hoarsely through foggy respirators. This way, that way, this way, that … Sent into space with only a melodeon, I taped down its keys so that I might sleep.
I wake up irrational, conscious only of the size of my head, the pound-per-pound ratio of living. A song in my throat
Spaceships of the aether
Return to your harbor safe
Spaceships of little matter
Space itself your nave
10
What were we waiting for except the end? What was the end except the anticipation of difference?
On the road to the capital, chestnuts blighted, farmers with axes swinging at their trunks. In town, dogs shitting in the middle of the sidewalk, people biking on gearless antiques. The Civil Defense Force directing traffic with white gloves and whistles.
No one knew what had become of the Famous Philosopher K. We kept sending cryptonyms to no response
ㅁ얄ㅈ댐 ㄻㅇ
ㅍ이 ㅁㅇㄴ리ㅏ
At dusk I walked in the park near the statue of the Emperor, his chin massive and solemn. I saw his daughter at the contraband market buying blue jeans and sneakers. I waved. She stared over my shoulder then left. It began to snow, the first snow of fall. I wrapped my scarf thick around my throat.
11
They said he was wise beyond his years.
… Erected a statue next to the Emperor’s. Townies started calling it Philosopher Hill. No one wished to be realistic anymore. Each bench had its new dogmatists reciting in the rain, If you are the sort to believe … If you are the sort to be skeptical …
I led students in time-tested debates, cautioning them about Venus, Mars, the black hole of too much proximity. I no longer dreamt. I hardly slept. No one went cherry picking. Pears rotted, fell soft to ground. Bees—extinct.
Each night was the last night.
Girls again wore the amulets of the serpent.