from About Centaurs

Process

1

In the beginning was heaven and earth:
black tallow and cornflower oxygen—
and fawns
flanking lithe deer
with god soft and white, flaxen.


2

         Cretaceous,
         Jurassic,
         Triassic,
         soil layers itself by tree rings—
         the Miocene charges by tank in majestic conquest.
         And a separation is there between water
         and an earth of ferns and birch woods
         —and he sees that it is good, when the genesis awakens by dawn.
         Nitrogen is brewing in lava,
         lava congeals by lacquer,
         mountain
         surmounting
         mountain
         by cosmic thundering astride,
         the Carboniferous saturates the earth with coal-stone pulp —
         —and he sees it is good for moist amphibians and sea stars.
         Iron pulsates at its most bloody,
         phosphor tightens in the tibia——
         —and he whistles into the crater pipes with singing air.


3

In the beginning was heaven and earth
and fawns,
and flaxen deer.
But then the course changes:
this
flesh
became
word.


4

When sometime under the fragrant angel, the robust rhododendron
trembled, they squealed, cracked, those puzzlegrasses, large and abundant,
               like new-york.
In Konin, Brest and Równe
on the squares
daisies wither
and policemen
night by night
are loving
their wedded
wives.



Grammar

(—and grow into words so joyfully,
and love words so easily—
you just have to pick them up and look, like burgundy against the light).

         Adjectives stretch like cats
         and like cats are made for petting
         soft cats warm and docile purr tenderness andante and maestoso.
         Soft cats have lakes in their eyes and green deepweed,
                        herbaceous at the bottom.
         I look sleepily into the cat’s pupils
            secret and glass and deceptive.

Here is shape and form, here is the indispensable essence,
the concreteness of the essence of the thing, material embedded in a noun,
and the world’s immobility and the peace of deadness and stability,
something that lasts still and is, a word concentrated in the body.
Here are simple tables and hard wooden benches,
here, their tissues fibrous, are thin and wet grasses,
here is a ginger church, which protrudes with the gothic in God,
and here is the venous arterial simplest human heart.

         Whereas an adverb is a sudden miracle,
         a surprise of rubbed flints—
         there was something unknown how
            and now it is diagonal and across
         and with both hands it wraps the thought and it is right sad and good.

And pronouns are tiny little rooms,
where on windowsills grow small pots.
Each corner—a souvenir from the past
and they are for You and for me.
This is a secret abracadabra
the laws of love algebras are flourishing:
I—that’s you, you—that’s me (equation)
I without you—you without me that’s zero.
We love enveloped by twilights, searching 
in small words as if in drawers.
I it’s you —you it’s me. Equation.
And pronouns are so secret as flowers,
like tiny, tiny rooms,
in which you live in secret before the world.
         (—so just take the word in your hand
         and look, like burgundy against the light,
         and grow into words so joyfully,
         and love words so easily.—).



Fraud

About the ruble, the thaler—about the jingling of days,
June was ringing in red-gold pieces,
ringing with the jingling of a purse—
as midnights
like tails
the moonlight shone—
—as noons
like heads
the sun beat at the eyes of ears of corn—

       —and I alone, and I weak
       amidst dreams
       forgot, these days are
       yours.



About Centaurs
like trammeled steeds across the arnica.



Virginity

          We . . .
Chaos of hazel, disheveled after rain,
the smell of fatty nuts’ pulp,
cows give birth in the heavy air
in sheds burning down like stars.— 
O, currants and ripe grains
juiciness surging at the brush,
o, she-wolves nursing little ones,
their wolf eyes sweet as lilies!
The honeyed apiarydom of resins drips,
the goat’s udder round like a pumpkin— 
white milk flows like eternity
in the maternal breast of temples.

          And we . . .
          . . . in hermetic
          as a steel thermos
          little cubes of peach wallpapers,
          tangled up to the neck in dresses,
          lead
          cultural
          conversations.



Declaration