Five Poems

Abstract

94 wlt may / august 2015 An Invitation to Sail A little kick to the anchor, and off I drift! I’m paddling somewhere, striving toward something, paddling and paddling and paddling – and here’s somewhere, here’s a whole ocean of something! This seems like a good place to soak and buoy my skull, a good place to establish the Galapagos Mind. The waters merge. An archipelago rises, teeming with ideas as slow as tortoises, as preposterous as a dodo: Tasmanian meditations and Lemurian conclusions; colorful, ethereal structures, as chatty as a parrot. These islands emerge not through tectonics, not through magmatics, not by the finger of God, but dreamt in an undersea drift, these islands undress the depths. In my Galapagos, evolutionary trickles ascend mountaintops and crash down in giant waterfalls flowing on to the sea. On the beach, each grain of sand is a letter in a bottle that I am too lazy to send. On the beach, on each grain of sand, I write myself an anchor. Émigré Tomorrow I’m flying out, gonna live in a brochure of the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Tourism. There, even house painters make a good living. I may not distinguish all colors precisely but I did notice the brochure is black and white. The stewards are acting funny and there’s no signal. I think something has happened. And the noise from the engine room is horrific. I am going out for a minute. When I get back I’ll try to explain. Untitled something silent something to hush that’s all | something to cut through the vocal chords of each and every | mute as murder | mute as word | like a dish of slaughtered tongue | a full stop to smother the hum | from aleph to omega | a handkerchief to soak up the affliction | an unresisting link to break | for the lot to fall back | into the null whole that spurt you | you something son of a something shut up something cover feature new hebrew writing Five Poems by Saar Yachin above right Hanan Shlonsky, A Couple of Books, 2006, tempera on linen, 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist. worldliteraturetoday.org 95 Heatdeath Two talk about the heat death of the universe. Crouching by a spiral heater, they discuss dwindling stars, chilling nebulas, the settling of differences. It’s a mountaintop village, winter’s cold, the universe a smoldering ember. Two talk, chilled to idiocy: But who cares about “the heat death of the universe”? What about the heat death that is every day, when his breath and his breath demand equality? What about differences dying by the minute? Like a fire peed on by a boy every word flickers – it’s so cold – shrinks into the scrotum they both tire of playing with. Heatdeath says: The Milky Way is the most bourgeois galaxy we know. Heatdeath replies: Gentrification. It used to be hot as hell around here. On Your Mark Go. Because they live; Because the blank shot still rings; Because your heart bullets toward; Because from behind a light cracks and snaps at your back; Because the home stretch glows, signaling liftoff; Because relayers die and are born, waiting for you; Because till the handoff, till the end, till the blaze and impact: Get set. Anyway you’ll live, anyway you’ll run; Anyway when your tendon snaps, you’ll shoot into your skin; Anyway you’ll rise and set on your heart’s horizon; Anyway you were sent dead, born to wait; Anyway you’re given to the light, to the end, to accelerate: On your mark. If light struck then it was darkness that broke; If you were born, you were tired of your death; If the bow dances, from its discord, you move forth. Because anyway if ordered, you’ll report to your place, And if the shot is fired, you’ll burst into a run. If they want a fairy tale, you’ll recite: once upon a time, And there was the light and there was the shot And there was that set place and the race. Once you were and once you lived and once you leapt and here you are. Translations...