Offered Without Comment

’Ασíνην τε. . . — ILIAD

All morning long we looked around the citadel starting from the shaded side there where the sea green and without lustre — breast of a slain peacock — received us like time without an opening in it. Veins of rock dropped down from high above, twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive at the water’s touch, while the eye following them struggled to escape the monotonous see-saw motion, growing weaker and weaker.

On the sunny side a long empty beach and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls. No living thing, the wild doves gone and the king of Asini, whom we’ve been trying to find for two years now, unknown, forgotten by all, even by Homer, only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain, thrown here like the gold burial mask. You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light like a dry jar in dug earth: the same sound that our oars make in the sea. The king of Asini a void under the mask everywhere with us everywhere with us, under a name: ‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’                                           and his children statues and his desires the fluttering of birds, and the wind in the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships anchored in a vanished port: under the mask a void.

Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence a dark spot that you see travelling like a fish in the dawn calm of the sea: a void everywhere with us. And the bird, a wing broken, that flew away last winter — tabernacle of life — and the young woman who left to play with the dog-teeth of summer and the soul that sought the lower world gibbering and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the torrent of the sun with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow.

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself does there really exist among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows and curves does there really exist here where one meets the path of rain, wind and ruin does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness of those who’ve waned so strangely in our lives, those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea’s boundlessness or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending like the branches of a terrible willow tree heaped in unremitting despair while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness has turned to stone: the poet a void.

Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring, and from the depths of the cave a startled bat hit the light as an arrow hits a shield: ‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’. If only that could be the king of Asini we’ve been searching for so carefully on this acropolis sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon the stones.

a crystal willow, a poplar of water,

a tall fountain the wind arches over,

a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,

a course of a river that turns, moves on,

doubles back, and comes full circle,

forever arriving:

the calm course

of the stars or an unhurried spring,

water with eyes closed welling over

with oracles all night long,

a single presence in a surge of waves,

wave after wave till it covers all,

a reign of green that knows no decline,

like the flash of wings unfolding in the sky,

a path through the wilderness of days to come,

and the gloomy splendor of misery like a bird

whose song can turn a forest to stone,

and the imminent joys on branches that vanish,

the hours of light pecked away by the birds,

and the omens that slip past the hand,

a sudden presence like a burst of song,

like the wind singing in a burning building,

a glance that holds the world and all

its seas and mountains dangling in the air,

body of light filtered through an agate,

thighs of light, belly of light, the bays,

the solar rock, cloud-colored body,

color of a brisk and leaping day,

the hour sparkles and has a body,

the world is visible through your body,

transparent through your transparency,

I travel my way through galleries of sound,

I flow among echoing presences,

I cross transparencies as though I were blind,

a reflection erases me, I'm born in another,

oh forest of pillars that are enchanted,

through arches of light I travel into

the corridors of a diaphanous fall,

I travel your body, like the world,

your belly is a plaza full of sun,

your breasts two churches where blood

performs its own, parallel rites,

my glances cover you like ivy,

you are a city the sea assaults,

a stretch of ramparts split by the light

in two halves the color of peaches,

a domain of salt, rocks and birds,

under the rule of oblivious noon,

dressed in the color of my desires,

you go your way naked as my thoughts,

I travel your eyes, like the sea,

tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,

the hummingbird burns in those flames,

I travel your forehead, like the moon,

like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying tonight or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be for what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me,   disappoint.

Quando fanciullo io venni A pormi con le Muse in disciplina, L’una di quelle mi pigliò per mano; E poi tutto quel giorno La mi condusse intorno A veder l’officina. Mostrommi a parte a parte Gli strumenti dell’arte, E i servigi diversi A che ciascun di loro S’adopra nel lavoro Delle prose e de’ versi. Io mirava, e chiedea: Musa, la lima ov’è? Disse la Dea: La lima è consumata; or facciam senza. Ed io, ma di rifarla Non vi cal, soggiungea, quand’ella è stanca? Rispose: hassi a rifar, ma il tempo manca.

Oil on limbs, maybe a rancid smell as on the chapel’s oil-press here, as on the rough pores of the unturning stone.

Oil on hair wreathed in rope and maybe other scents unknown to us poor and rich and statuettes offering small breasts with their fingers.

Oil in the sun the leaves shuddered when the stranger stopped and the silence weighed between the knees. The coins fell: ‘In the goddess’s name I summon you...’

In the first version, Persephone is taken from her mother and the goddess of the earth punishes the earth—this is consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction in doing harm, particularly unconscious harm:

we may call this negative creation.

Persephone’s initial sojourn in hell continues to be pawed over by scholars who dispute the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape, or was she drugged, violated against her will, as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved does not correct the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home stained with red juice like a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will keep this word: is earth “home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably, in the bed of the god? Is she at home nowhere? Is she a born wanderer, in other words an existential replica of her own mother, less hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like no one, you know. The characters are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided, ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world, a kind of diagram that separates heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself: where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness, of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell. Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know what winter is, only that she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades. What is in her mind? Is she afraid? Has something blotted out the idea of mind?

She does know the earth is run by mothers, this much is certain. She also knows she is not what is called a girl any longer. Regarding incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her will take up the rest of her life. When the passion for expiation is chronic, fierce, you do not choose the way you live. You do not live; you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death which seem, finally, strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want when the forces contending over you could kill you.

White of forgetfulness, white of safety—

They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed to belong entirely to life. Earth

asks us to deny this rift, a threat disguised as suggestion— as we have seen in the tale of Persephone which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover— the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen the meadow without the daisies. Suddenly she is no longer singing her maidenly songs about her mother’s beauty and fecundity. Where the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth, song of the mythic vision of eternal life—

My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth—

We said goodbye at one of the corners of Plaza Once. From the opposite pavement, I looked back; you had turned to wave. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. A river of traffic and people ran between us. How could I have known that that river was the sad Acheron, from which there is no return?

We did not see each other again, and a year later you were dead. Calling up that memory now, I look at it and think it was false. Behind our inconsequential parting was eternal separation.

After dinner last night I did not go out but, in an effort to understand these things, I reread Plato's last teaching, which he put into his master's mouth. When the flesh dies, I read, the soul escapes. Now I no longer know whether the truth lies in Plato's dismal view or in our innocent farewell. Because if souls do not die, it's quite right that goodbyes should not be overstated.

To say farewell is to deny separation. It is to say, 'Today we played at separating but tomorrow we'll see each other again.' Men have invented farewells because they know they are in some way immortal, even if they think themselves incidental and ephemeral.

I do not know more than the Sea tells me, told me long ago, or I overheard Her     telling distant roar upon the sands, waves of meaning in the cradle of whose     sounding and resounding power I slept.

                             Manchild,     She sang

--or was it a storm uplifting the night     into a moving wall in which I was carried as if a mothering nest had     been made in dread?

the wave of a life darker than my     life before me sped, and I, larger than I was, grown dark as     the shoreless depth, arose from myself, shaking the last     light of the sun from me.

                             Manchild,     She said,

Come back to the shores of what you are. Come back to the crumbling shores.

    All night The mothering tides in which your     Life first formd in the brooding light have quencht the bloody     Splendors of the sun

and, under the triumphant processions     of the moon, lay down thunder upon thunder of an old     longing, the beat

of whose repeated spell     consumes you.

                             Thetis, then,     my mother, has promised me the mirage of a boat, a vehicle     of water within the water, and my soul would return from     the trials of its human state, from the long siege, from the     struggling companions upon the plain, from the burning towers and deeds     of honor and dishonor, the deeper unsatisfied war beneath     and behind the declared war, and the rubble of beautiful, patiently     workt moonstones, agates, jades, obsidians,

turnd and retrund in the wash of     the tides, the gleaming waste,     the pathetic wonder,

words turnd in the phrases of song     before our song ...or are they

beautiful, patiently workt remembrances of those     long gone from me, returned anew, ghostly in the light     of the moon, old faces?

For Thetis, my mother, has promised     me a boat, a lover, an up-lifter of my spirit     into the rage of my first element rising, a princedom     in the unreal, a share in Death

*

Time, time. It’s time.

The business of Troy has long been done.

Achilles in lreuke has come home.

She begins to strip like a roommate and climb into bed.

They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there.

Her hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs.

He lies still as a dog beneath it, still as an idiot.

The next morning she is recovered. His prick is hard. She takes it in her hand. They always sleep naked. Their flesh is innocent and warm. In the end she is arranged across the pillows, a ritual she accepts without a word.

It is half an hour before they fall apart, spent, and call for breakfast. She eats both her rolls and one of his.

“There was a lot,” she says.

She glistens with it. The inside of her thighs is wet.

“How long does it take to make again?” she asks.

Dean tries to think. He is remembering biology.

“Two or three days,” he guesses.

“Non, non!” she cries. That is not what she meant.

She begins to make him hard again. In a few minutes he rolls her over and puts it in as if the intermission were ended. This time she is wild. The great bed begins creaking. Her breath becomes short. Dean has to brace his hands on the wall. He hooks his knees outside her legs and drives himself deeper.

“Oh,” she breathes, “that’s the best.”

My dear Telemachus,                   The Trojan War is over now; I don’t recall who won it. The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave so many dead so far from their own homeland. But still, my homeward way has proved too long. While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon, it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don’t know where I am or what this place can be. It would appear some filthy island, with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs. A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other. Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son! To a wanderer the faces of all islands resemble one another. And the mind trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons, run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears. I can’t remember how the war came out; even how old you are--I can’t remember.

King Cleomenes didn’t know, he didn’t dare— he didn’t how to say such a thing to his mother: that Ptolemy was demanding, as a guarantee for their agreement, that she too be sent to Egypt to be held there as a hostage; a very humiliating, unseemly affair. He was always on the verge of speaking; and would always hesitate. He was always about to tell; and would always stop. But the extraordinary woman understood him (she’d already heard some rumors about it anyway), and encouraged him to tell her everything. And she laughed; and said of course she’d go. And indeed rejoiced that she could, in her old age, be of use to Sparta still. As for humiliation— but she was totally indifferent. Of course a Lagid arriviste like that was incapable of comprehending the Spartan spirit; and so his arrogant demand could not, in fact, humiliate an Eminent Lady such as she: mother to a Spartan king.