translated by Jonathan Galassi Infernos howl in the murdered trees. Summer sleeps in the virgin honey, the lizard in its monster infancy. For my human smell, thanks to the angels’ air, to water, my celestial heart in the cell’s fertile dark.
R: A special present for my birthday? How sweet of you. But what are you thinking of? T: Rather than some trinket, beaded out of flashy stones, a living gift. R: A living gift! One that grows on me? T: Exactly. A present, out of all our past, to keep you constant company. R: Good!…
1. It’s so much easier to get further from home than nearer that all men become travelers. 2. Of all the ways to avoid living, perfect discipline is the most admired. 3. Idolaters of the great need to believe that what they love cannot fail them, adorers of camp, kitsch, trash that…
May 24 A shake erupts, a self-guffaw. Some miles up, he reads a life, detailed with his own, by drugstore specs on a wasp-boy’s cord. His focus is keen, a screen. Elated as he gets in this fake air, the book’s a scream. Another shake. Across his aisle, two toddlers shriek strange alphabets and wail;…
So the question becomes—no offense— are men wolves or are men slop? Because my heart is definitely a pig. Each boy sings like a halfwit alone in a barn: Little pig heart, little pig heart, let me in. Oh yes, those farm boys let loose to form cities have a way with words. My whiskered…
Distance, detachment, then, like lenses clicking together at last in alignment, the socketing, sprocketing, then always, like flame in a cave, sympathy first, then perhaps fear, perhaps for no reason something like rage but always this desire to parse, scan, solve, these sensitive bits of cosmos streaming towards me like filings to magnets, one then…
When something irks you, let your anger build— Don’t spend it in a temporary snit. Don’t leave your smallest passion unfulfilled. “Let bygones be bygones,” say the weak-willed. Ha! Watch where a bygone goes, and bottle it. Appreciate your anger. Let it build Vast caves of vintage rage, best when chilled. Invest in every wrong…
Last summer the Better Boys bloomed, tiny saffron flowers going off like slow Chinese rockets, and set their pinhead fruits. I’d ordered a pint of ladybugs from Burpee’s catalogue and scattered their crimson clock-backs through the furry, pungent leaves. I sat in my resin chair, observing the light of late afternoons move through rinsed branches….
The man had cornered a great deal of money and when it got Hot he went—could go—where it was cool. As for The servants, well, tant pis. A.C. was not yet part Of the picture. But an icehouse. There you had it. The butler’s Gopher boy and an upstairs maid called Sophie (whose Lonely duties…
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